Foes of Mich. workers take aim at prevailing wage again

Those behind an effort to sandbag Michigan's prevailing wage law are not giving up, despite the fact its first effort at a ballot measure failed because of the presence of a massive number of duplicate and improper names on the signature sheets.

Chris Fisher, leader of the anti-prevailing wage group, Protecting Michigan Taxpayers, has vowed to re-start the petition process, saying he would submit new petition language to the Secretary of State to do just that. He had to ditch the old campaign on Oct. 30.

Fisher's threat was prompted by an earlier press conference by the union-backed group, Protect Michigan Jobs, which found 43 percent of the 390,000 repeal signatures the so-called taxpayers group submitted to the state Board of Canvassers were invalid. That means the petition was more than 25,000 short of the 252,523 valid names state law required.

 Much of the funding for the petition effort came from the ultra-rich, ultra-right DeVos family of Grand Rapids, owners of the exploitative Amway direct sales firm. The Michigan campaign to repeal the prevailing wage, which would trash construction workers' wages and job protections, is part of a nationwide effort to destroy workers' pay and obliterate both their unions and their rights on the job.

Bart Carrigan, a co-chair of Protect Michigan Jobs and President and CEO of Associated General Contractors of Michigan, said the effort would be disastrous for workers:

Eliminating prevailing wage to cut wages and benefits of hard working skilled trades men and women in our state would hurt the Michigan economy, aggravating current worker shortages in the industry and discouraging young people from entering these valuable professions. Let's end this attack on skilled trade workers and the companies who hire them as quickly as possible, so we can focus on building a better Michigan.

Apparently, however, Protecting Michigan Taxpayers is confident that their deep-pocketed backers are willing to double-down on the incompetence of the anti-worker Associated Builders and Contractors and its signature collectors with their vow to re-start the petition process.

Now, having filed the petition paperwork, the group's new deadline to collect the necessary 252,523 signatures is in April 2016. If sufficient signatures are collected -- and approved -- the prevailing wage repeal question goes before the Republican-run state legislature. There, the building trades have been lobbying a handful of moderate Republican lawmakers not to approve it.

If the legislature votes down the measure or passes on it, the prevailing wage repeal question goes to the voters as a statewide referendum in November 2016. State surveys indicate strong support for prevailing wage, and construction industry leaders have also publicly expressed support for the law.

Stick up for workers, Michigan! Say no to repealing prevailing wage!

• Press Associates, Inc. contributed to this report.

Father of Michigan RTW gets his money from job-cutting corporation

Dick DeVos, the loony billionaire whose dollars bought right-to-work-for-less in Michigan, inherited his fortune from a company that sent American jobs overseas.

This should surprise no one.

DeVos is the son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos. Amway in 2011 settled a class-action suit alleging the company is a Ponzi scheme. USA Today explained:

The lawsuit alleged Amway is a "pyramid scheme" — which was changed to "illegal scheme" in an amended version — in which distributors rarely sell products to outside customers, only to other new distributors they bring in, who must bring more recruits in to make money. New entrants, the lawsuit says, were "effectively required" to purchase products and event tickets from the high-level distributors.

But if Amway was ripping off people, at least it was doing it with American products. Not any more. Inbound Logistics recently interviewed an Amway executive, who said:

Until about 2010, most of our supply chain and manufacturing was U.S.-based. That has now changed. Amway has been moving home care manufacturing closer to the point of sale in different regions. We're making product in Belgium for Europe and Russia, and producing in China for Southeast Asia.

So, let's review: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said for months that right-to-work-for-less wasn't on his agenda. Then Amway heir Dick DeVos gathered some of his sociopath billionaire pals together to pressure Republicans to pass a right-to-work-for-less bill in the lame duck session of 2012. According to Mother Jones, 

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. 

One of those talking points was that right-to-work-for-less would bring jobs to Michigan.

The Republicans, under intense pressure from the billionaires, caved.

We've known all along that billionaires like Dick DeVos don't care one bit about creating jobs in Michigan or anywhere else. All they want to do is to cut costs. When he was CEO of Amway, Dick DeVos cut over 1,300 jobs, mostly in Michigan.

So knowing that Amway moved jobs overseas just makes it more painful to think people actually believe Dick DeVos's lies.

Today's Teamster News 01.22.14

Local Union Leaders Endorse YRCW Tentative Agreement  teamster.org   ...Yesterday, leaders from Teamster local unions that represent workers at YRC Worldwide Inc. overwhelmingly recommended to approve a tentative agreement and to send it out to the members for a vote...
Meet the New Kochs: The DeVos Clan's Plan to Defund the Left  Mother Jones   ...They beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state?...
Labor Finds an Unlikely Savior in Scalia  In These Times...On Tuesday morning, something curious happened at the Supreme Court: Justice Antonin Scalia gave a full-throated defense of public-sector unions. The case, Harris v. Quinn, involves the narrow question of whether or not Illinois home healthcare workers are public employees and if they are permitted to join public-sector unions...
In Memphis, Locked-Out Kellogg Workers Evoke MLK’s Legacy   In These Times   ...Union workers picket outside Kellogg's Memphis plant after being locked out for refusing to accept lower pay and more part-time positions..
This Deep Red State Could Be Next To Have Paid Family Leave  ThinkProgress   ...On Thursday, a group of Nebraska state Senators introduced a package of legislation aimed at helping the state’s workers, including a measure that would create a paid family leave program…
Corporations Hoard Cash While Americans Go Without A Job  Economic Populist   ...The amount of cash multinational corporations are stashing is at an all time high and economists are wondering why...
Five big questions about the massive chemical spill in West Virginia  Washington Post   ...A closer look at what the Elk River spill says about America’s outdated chemical-safety laws...
What I Learned from a Week on Food Stamps: Paul Ryan Couldn’t Be Any More Wrong  The Salon   ...Republicans have their sights set on food-stamp cuts that would devastate lower-income Americans...
Surge In Homeless Deaths Expected Over Next Decade Unless We Act  ThinkProgress   ...Hundreds of thousands of homeless people could die over the next decade as the homeless population in the United States grows older but continues to lack access to proper housing, food, or medical care...
Foreclosure Settlement Still Failing 700,000 Families One Year Later  Huffington Post   ...One year after federal bank regulators pledged that a nearly $10 billion legal settlement would quickly deliver cash to foreclosure abuse victims, hundreds of thousands of people are still checking their mailboxes each day, only to find them empty...

The ugly, tax-exempt conspiracy against democracy and the middle class is even worse than you thought

Thanks to Working Class Heroes for the cartoon. 

Wiping out the middle class is considered a charitable activity in the United States.

We're just learning billionaires secretly contributed $400 million to a nonprofit that's been funneling money to corporate lobbyists since 1999. Compare that with a $25 T-shirt purchase at a political convention -- you have to disclose that and pay sales tax (in most states).

"Conspiracies against the public don't get much uglier than this," writes George Monbiot at The Guardian. He's referring to the new revelations about the money-launderer Donors Trust.

Democracy Now reports,

Since 1999, the nonprofit charity Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact it has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. The most detailed accounting to date shows Donors Trust funds a wish list of right-wing causes, prompting Mother Jones magazine to label it "the dark-money ATM of the right."

Donors Trust and its affiliate Donors Capital Fund get money from the usual suspects: Benedict Arnold Koch brothers, Ponzi scheme Amway heir Dick DeVos, North Carolina pillager budget director Dick Pope. Click here for a great interactive chart of who funds these "charities."

Here's what they've been doing lately:

• Funneling money to ALEC, the dating service for lawmakers and corporations
• Supporting 51 state-level corporate lobbying groups that masquerade as "think tanks" (e.g., the Mackinac Center, which pushed No Rights At Work in Michigan).
• Establishing a pro-billionaire statehouse news network including Watchdog.org and Statehouse News Network.
• Funding a group called Project on Fair Representation, which aims to repeal the Voting Rights Act. 
• Spending $118 million on 102 different groups to dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action.

Monbiot explains why it works:

They need a network of independent-looking organisations that can produce plausible arguments in defence of their positions. Once the arguments have been developed, projecting them is easy. Most of the media is owned by billionaires, who are happy to promote the work of people funded by the same class. One of the few outlets they don't own – the BBC – has been disgracefully incurious about the identity of those to whom it gives a platform. 

By these means the ultra-rich come to dominate the political conversation, without declaring themselves. Those they employ are clever and well-trained, with money their opponents can only dream of. They are skilled at rechannelling public anger that might otherwise be directed at their funders: the people who tanked the economy, who use the living planet as their dustbin, who won't pay taxes and demand that the poor must pay for the mistakes of the rich. Anger, thanks to the work of these hired hands, is instead aimed at the victims or opponents of the billionaires: people on benefits, trade unions, Greenpeace, the American Civil Liberties Union.

It's a conspiracy that isn't just killing the middle class. It's killing democracy, as well. Step One is to create gridlock at the national level by funding political campaigns. UK writerJonathan Hopkin explains:

Why risk annoying powerful people who can finance your reelection, when you could do nothing and blame someone else for the bad consequences of failing to deliver reforms?

British author Charles Stross puts it a little differently:

Unfortunately, democracy is broken… our representative democratic institutions have been captured by meta-institutions that implement the iron law of oligarchy by systematically reducing the risk of change. They have done so by converging on a common set of policies that do not serve the public interest, but minimize the risk of the parties losing the corporate funding they require in order to achieve re-election.

Since so little gets done at the national level, the billionaires are free to focus on the states. That's where ALEC and the State Policy Network wreak their havoc over the fierce objections of the public.

But you knew about that already...

Today's Teamster News 02.07.13

401Ks are a disaster (opinion)  USA Today   ...Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles...
RBS fined $612 million for rate rigging  Reuters ...Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $612 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated benchmark interest rates, and regulators warned there is more to come in the global investigation. RBS became the third bank to pay fines in the Libor scandal...
China made 1.2B mobile phones in 2012  ZDNet   ...China produced 1.18 billion mobile phones in 2012, accounting for more than 50 percent of mobile phone sales worldwide...
China unveils major tax reforms to make rich pay more  The Guardian  ...China has unveiled sweeping tax reforms to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow the gap between the urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor...
Greece orders seamen back to work on 6th day of strike  BBC  ...Workers manning ferry services to Greece's numerous islands have been demanding the payment of wages more than six months in arrears and the signing of collective work contracts with ferry companies...
Thanks To Congressional Incompetence, Saturday Mail Delivery Is History  ThinkProgress   ...Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, Congress has for years forced the USPS to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of pensions for its employees, a requirement not made of any other public or private institution...
Pointless attacks on unions in Kansas, Missouri (opinion)  Kansas City Star   ...The unnecessary attacks on unions demonstrate how susceptible state legislatures are to outside forces...
Hearing on Missouri 'right to work' bill attracts crowd  Associated Press  ...A standing room only crowd spilled into the Capitol hallway Wednesday to watch a Missouri House committee hearing on a bill barring payment of union dues as a condition of employment...
Senate approves constitutional amendment on union elections  Northwest Indiana Times   ...All union organizing elections would have to be conducted by secret ballot under an amendment to the Indiana Constitution approved 33-16 by the Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday...
Local 150 will appeal judge’s dismissal of its challenge to right-to-work law  Post-Tribune   ...Attorneys for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 filed the notice to appeal Monday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond...
Maine Voter ID Law Not Recommended By Independent Elections Panel  Huffington Post   ..."The Commission, by a 4 to 1 vote, finds that the negative aspects of a Voter ID law outweigh its potential benefits and recommends that a Voter ID system not be pursued in Maine," read the report from the five-member panel...
Rich DeVos family gave $1.75 million to fight Michigan's Proposal 2 on union collective bargaining  Michigan Live  ...Betsy DeVos, Dan DeVos, Dick DeVos, Doug DeVos, Elisabeth DeVos, Helen DeVos, Maria DeVos, Pamella DeVos and Richard DeVos altogether gave $2.8 million to the Republican party, political candidates and conservative causes in Michigan last year, a MIRS report calculates...
Right-to-work bill finding little support in NH House  Nashua Telegraph   ...The House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee dealt a blow to the latest attempt to pass right-to-work legislation in New Hampshire. The committee voted 13-5 to recommend House Bill 322 be killed when the full House takes up the measure...
Sprucing Up Suppression: Pennsylvania GOP Proposes New Election-Rigging Scheme  Center for Media and Democracy  ...Pennsylvania's Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi intends to introduce legislation that would award that state's electoral votes proportionally according to the popular vote, rather than according to the winner in each Congressional district. If the plan had been in place for last November's election Romney would have received 8 of Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes...
Labor lawyer: Kansas union bill will silence workers  Associated Press   ...The payroll bill is one of several proposed measures that Democrats and union representatives see as eroding the rights of public employees to participate in the political process, whether it be supporting candidates with political action committees or advocating public policy changes...
Talks of Bus Strikes Still Alive  The Coastal Source  ...Talks of a possible bus strike for Beaufort County Schools are still up in the air...The Teamsters Union and Durham Services are trying to reach a compromise about possible pay raises for current bus drivers and better benefits, but Tuesday afternoon, rumors spread that Durham Bus Services walked out of the meeting...
Cecil supervisors approve police, public works contracts  Observer-Reporter  ...Public works employees, members of Teamsters Local 205, will receive a 3 percent salary increase over the course of their four-year contract...

Today's Teamster News 01.29.13

Apple shelters almost $1bn a week from US tax man  The Telegraph   ...Apple's completely legal tax avoidance strategies bring the total the company has sheltered from the US tax authorities to $94bn...
Senators Reach Bipartisan Immigration Reform Deal  Talking Points Memo   ...the package would include an e-verify program to prevent employers from hiring undocumented workers in the future, an expanded visa and guest worker program to manage future immigration, and a seperate streamlined path towards citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were bought to America as children...
Report: Treasury approved excessive pay for executives at bailed-out AIG, GM and Ally  Associated Press   ...Treasury also allowed pay packages totaling $5 million or more for nearly a quarter of the executives at those firms...
The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy  New York Times   ...one-third of adults who live in poverty are working but do not earn enough to support themselves and their families. A quarter of jobs in America pay below the federal poverty line for a family of four ($23,050)...
Study: Nearly half are overqualified for their jobs  USA Today   ...Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they're overqualified, a new study out Monday suggests...
Sen. Colbeck Tells Koch-Funded Group RTW Passed Because of DeVos Funding  Progress Michigan ...“This just confirms what we’ve long suspected, that Gov. Snyder’s so-called Right to Work billwas bought-and-paid for by billionaire CEO Dick DeVos. It’s time for politicians likeSnyder and Colbeck to start protecting middle class families, not the special interests..."
Va right-to-work measure dies on 20-20 Senate tie  Associated Press   ... On a party line vote, the Virginia Senate has killed a measure that would write the state's longstanding right-to-work law into its constitution...
Chris Christie Vetoes Minimum Wage Hike That 82 Percent Of New Jerseyans Support  Bold Progressives   ...This minimum wage increase would’ve brought the wage to $8.50 and then tie it to the consumer price index for the future. ..
Roxanne Rubin, Nevada Republican, Accepts Plea Deal After Committing Voter Fraud  Huffington Post   ...Roxanne Rubin, 56, a casino worker on the Las Vegas Strip, was arrested on Nov. 3, 2012 after trying to vote twice, once at her poling site in Henderson and then at a second site in Las Vegas...
Negotiations Continue Between Teamsters, Durham  WestAshleyPatch   ...“We had to take a strike vote to get Durham to get serious in negotiations. We’ve met over 39 times with the contractor and they hadn’t moved on the key issues of concern to the drivers and monitors,” President of Local 509 L.D. Fletcher said in a statement...

Mich. senator says, on tape, DeVos $ bought No Rights At Work

This is the doofus who called Dick DeVos an "unsung hero" for buying No Rights At Work.

A Michigan lawmaker blurted out on tape that Ponzi scheme Amway heir Dick DeVos's money was critical to the passage of No Rights At Work last year. 

The legislator, state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, was recorded while speaking to a phony tea party group funded by the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers on Jan. 13. That was just days before a Kansas lobbyist admitted No Rights At Work is about bustin union and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said it wasn't about jobs.

So in a sudden frenzy of truth-telling, extremists are admitting:

1. Billionaires bought No Rights At Work laws, 
2. No Rights At Work laws are all about busting unions, 
3. No Rights At Work has nothing to do with creating jobs. 

And they're doing it in front of electronic recording devices.

Colbeck gave credit to DeVos and former Michigan Republican Party Chair Ron Weiser for providing “air cover...financial contributions” for lawmakers who wavered in support of No Rights At Work.

Progress Michigan issued a statement:

“It’s amazing what Republican politicians will say to Tea Party activists when they think no one is listening,” said Zack Pohl, Executive Director of Progress Michigan. “This just confirms what we’ve long suspected, that Gov. Snyder’s so-called Right to Work bill was bought-and-paid for by billionaire CEO Dick DeVos. It’s time for politicians like Snyder and Colbeck to start protecting middle class families, not the special interests.” 

Colbeck has a history of accidentally telling the truth when the cameras are on. At a coffee hour with constituents in April 2011, he complained about taking a “40 percent pay cut” to run for office, and said the United States is not a democracy.

The audio of Patrick Colbeck talking about DeVos and Weiser providing “air cover” can be heard here. Colbeck spoke at the AFP-Michigan “Citizens Watchdog Training” on January 19, 2013.

The video above shows Colbeck saying the United States isn't a democracy.

What is it with these people?

How the Kochs bought Michigan lawmakers

Actually, the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers aren't the only un-American billionaires to buy radical Republicans in Michigan. Ponzi scheme Amway heir Dick DeVos spent big to get himself the right to lower workers' wages by $1,500 a year.

Let's be clear: Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republicans railroading the right-to-work-for-less bill through the Legislature know it's bad for workers. They know it will lower wages and increase poverty. And they know most people know that. That's why they spent two years lying about their intentions.  They were too spineless to tell the voters what they intended to do.

The spines of these cowardly Republicans were stiffened by the largesse of the Kochs, DeVos and other politically active billionaires. The plutocrats spent $18 million over the past four years to create protective cover for Republicans to attack workers.

They did it by setting up front groups with deceptive names. They paid for sophisticated market research. They sprinkled fairy dust like "freedom" and "choice" around their attacks on workers. They created a smoke-and-fog machine to promote the misnamed "right to work," which conveys no rights and provides no work.

The chart above shows the sad mismatch between the money spent by the un-American billionaires to fight unions (purple and green) and the amount spent to support them (yellow). The Mackinac Center (green) receives considerable support from DeVos. The Koch brothers fund Americans for Prosperity (purple).  They also support the nefarious ALEC, which drafted large sections of the right-to-work bill.

Lee Fang at The Nation explains,

These organizations are part of a more aggressive political force that is adept at controlling the twenty-four-hour news cycle and managing coalitions. Unlike ordinary business lobbies that simply support right-to-work, these advocacy groups go out and shape public opinion through broad messaging and content development, which in turn is used for organizing around policies.

Fang points out that a DeVos lackey founded a group last month that paid for a $1 million television and radio campaign to promote right-to-work-for-less. The ads were launched on the very day Snyder announced his "reversal" on the legislation. Meanwhile several business lobby groups regurgitated the Mackinac Center's propaganda.

Writes Fang,

The Mackinac Center is a right-wing think tank in Michigan that produces pro-Right to Work reports, sponsors a pro-Right to Work legal foundation, and produces an array of other content, from a Pininterest page to short videos. The Center has gone on a media tour, touting Snyder's move this week on CNN, Fox Business, and much of the Michigan press. Notably, the group recently started two of its own media outlets, Michigan Capitol Confidential and Watchdog Wire Michigan. 

Americans for Prosperity - Michigan, the group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, has a relatively new chapter in Michigan that has produced pamphlets extolling anti-Right to Work reforms. This week, the group set up a heated tent outside the capital to support Snyder's law and bused activists to Lansing to counter labor protesters.

Once the deed is done, Republicans can expect lavish vacations from ALEC. They'll get hefty corporate donations for their re-election campaigns. When they retire, or if the voters boot them, they're quite likely to land a lucrative gig working for the Mackinac Institute or some Koch-funded propaganda think tank.

Nice work if you can get it. The rest of us, of course, are just screwed.

WI RECALL: Not-so-Darling record on tobacco, education

Wisconsin state Sen. Alberta Not-so-Darling is facing recall because she put the interests of big corporations ahead of Wisconsin's middle class. Not-so-D doesn't even have to think about HOW to do it. She just lets ALEC pull her puppet strings. And then she gets money from big corporations! It's like magic!

The Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes the http://www.alexexposed.com/ website, reveals just one of Darling's pay-for-play gambits: sneaking a provision into law that lowers taxes on fruit-flavored chewing tobacco.

At the end of May, as the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee (JFC) worked day after day and late into the night voting on changes and amendments to the state budget bill, Joint Finance Co-Chair Alberta Darling (R-River Falls) quietly slipped a small provision into the massive budget bill that has received little attention.

Her motion would change the way moist snuff and other smokeless tobacco products are taxed from a valuation based on volume to one based on weight. The measure not only provides a big tax break for companies like Altria/Phillip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, it aids Big Tobacco in their latest outreach effort to kids.

And guess what happened after that? Darling got a $1,000 campaign contribution from Altria/Phillip Morris's political action committee.

Darling cares so much for Wisconsin's children that voted to slash funding for public schools. You wouldn't know about her anti-children agenda, though, if you watched the ad  sponsored by the cleverly misnamed American Federation for Children (AFC). The AFC is a front group promoting for-profit schools. It gets a lot of funding and support from loony Amway billionaires who want to destroy public education.

Darling was considered a formidable candidate, but Teamster-endorsed candidate Sandy Pasch just closed a nine-point gap to pull neck-and-neck with her.

Kochs to fund best grass-roots uprising money can buy

Props to Progress Ohio for this great illustration of the Kochs' latest phony astroturf group. This one aims to beat back the SB5 referendum in November (yes, we're feeling confident that enough signatures will be collected by June 30). Ohioans are now strongly opposed to SB5, which strips government workers of their collective bargaining rights. But the Kochs and their ilk will spend big time to try to change those opinions. How...civic of them.

It shouldn't be a surprise that extremist plutocrats like the Kochs are funneling money into anti-middle class propaganda. Here's what they've done so far this year -- at least what we know about:

• On March 18, the Koch-funded FreedomWorks announced that it would pour $5.6 million into a vicious anti-union ad beginning immediately in Ohio. The ad tried to portray Ohio workers as violent thugs by depicting a California union member and a Massachusetts congressman.   
• The DeVos (Amway billionaire) family's "American Federation for Children," which also gets Koch money,  became a major financial supporter of the six Republican senators who face recall because of their support for Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. AFC also paid for robo-calls telling Wisconsinites to oppose the recall of the Republican senators.
• The Koch-supported "Club for Growth" paid for a Wisconsin radio ad supporting Walker's anti-worker budget plan. The ad aired BEFORE lawmakers even knew about the bill, let alone saw a copy of it. 
• The Koch-supported Americans for Prosperity (Tea Party) paid to bus pro-Scott Walker demonstrators into Madison during a protest.
• The Koch-funded National Right to Work Committee paid canvassers to go door-to-door in the neighborhood of a New Hampshire state senator who opposes a right to work bill to destroy unions.

Lovely, isn't it?

Kochs' rich pals the DeVoses are also paying Walker

The Koch brothers aren't the only union-busting billionaires for whom Scott Walker prostitutes himself. He also does the bidding of the DeVos family,  the charming husband and wife team from Michigan that wants to destroy public education. (That's so their corporate buddies can run schools for profit.) The Devos "foundation," the American Federation for Children, actually gets money from the Koch brothers, so you know it can't be good. 

There's good money in sucking up to the Devoses. According to The Nation, he American Federation for Children was a top donor to Scott Walker in the 2010 election campaign. Reports The Nation:

An ardent backer of Walker and his legislative agenda, the American Federation for Children "spent an estimated $820,000 on independent expenditures and phony issue ad activity in the 2010 fall legislative races,” according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. 

Guess who else the Devoses are supporting? The Republican senators in Wisconsin who voted to strip collective bargaining rights from government workers. Again, from the Nation:

The federation has emerged as a major player on the side of the six Republican senators who face recall efforts because of their support for Walker’s anti-labor legislation – just as they would certainly be big backers of any effort to protect the governor from recall.

They also paid for robo-calls to oppose the recall effort against the Republican senators. You can hear the robocall here.

If all this infuriates you, you can at least sign a petition here against privatizing education.

A great success: Walker-Corbett-Rhee rally in DC

Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker cannot have been pleased by the reception he got in front of the Washington Marriott today. Nor can Chainsaw Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett or Erasergate star Michelle  Rhee.

The energetic protesters in front of the hotel got plenty of press attention, which detracted from the message flogged by the three enemies of public education. It can't have helped that the protest helped expose the extremist billionaire backers of the voucher movement.

The program went off without a hitch. Parents, teachers and students were all heard.  It was well worth the effort for all those who traveled by plane from Wisconsin, by bus from Pennsylvania and on foot, Metro and cab from Washington to march and speak up for public education.

Here's a quick wrap up of the press coverage:


The Philadelphia Inquirer reported

Protestors from Philadelphia, Bucks County and Harrisburgh made their way to Washington, D.C., this morning to protest at an education-related conference where Gov. Corbett was scheduled to speak.

About 200 demonstrators gathered shortly before noon outside the Washington Marriott Hotel, chanting "Save Our Schools," and holding signs, such as "Vouchers Aren't the Answer."..

Corbett's budget "is a sure-fire way to send the city back into more poverty," said former city middle school teacher, Lisa Haver, 55...

Senate Bill 1, expected to come up for a vote soon, would "strip money from public schools," diverting hundreds of millions of dollars away from already hard-hit districts statewide...

Parent Tim Brown, waiting for the bus to D.C., said he saw vouchers as "cynical maneuvering" by "right-wing billionaires," who want to privatize all education in America.

"If they're complaining there's a budget problem, why are they turning around and subsidizing private schools," he asked.

Politics PA got the message, reporting:

“The American Federation for Children (AFC),” said the groups in a joint media advisory, “is a group founded by the conservative DeVos family and a small core group of donors ideologically opposed to public education.”


“Walker and Corbett are carrying the water for DeVos and AFC, attacking teachers and students while gutting public education funding and silencing their voices.”

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party jumped on board with the criticism, forwarding news stories to the press about a recent poll showing that most Pennsylvania voters oppose school vouchers.

Salon also picked up on the fact that extremist billionaires are behind the push to eradicate public education:

The "American Federation for Children" -- a right-wing "education reform" organization founded and funded by religious right activist multimillionaire Betsy DeVos (former Republican candidate for governor of Michigan and sister of Blackwater founder Eirk Prince) and dedicated to electing state legislators who'll fund Christian schools with taxpayer money and crush public employees' unions -- is having a party in Washington, D.C., today, and they have invited Republican governors who have been working to fix education forever by firing all the greedy teachers and letting profit-seeking private interests manage the schools more "efficiently."

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett are two of the honored guests of the Federation. The third, of course, is crusading former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, movie star and hero of the Democratic elite. Rhee's address at the "policy summit" will probably not detail how to cover up evidence of widespread standardized test cheating, but it should.

Today's Teamster News 05.08.11

Big Bank Backlash: From Coast to Coast People are Moving their Money Common Dreams.org ...From San Francisco to Wall Street people are taking to the streets reminding governors and their friends on Wall Street and that they remember very well who tanked the global economy putting more than 8 million Americans out of work and creating a revenue crisis for many states...
Scott Walker rescinds layoff notices for assistant DAs The State Journal ...David Lasee, vice president of the Association of State Prosecutors, a union that represents ADAs, said he does not know what changed Walker's mind...
Wisconsin Republicans rush agenda before recalls Associated Press ...Republicans...plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and ... may also act again on Walker's controversial plan stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights...
Republicans losing the PR war World Net Daily ... latest Ohio polling shows that Republicans, while well-intentioned in their efforts to balance the state budget, are losing the public-relations battle and may end up losing much more...
Protesters greet Mich. governor UPI ...Opponents of a new state law that gives greater power to the appointed emergency managers of financially troubled municipalities held a rally before the parade started...
Business community won big in Florida Legislature — many others lost Orlando Sentinel ...Regulations, programs and entire state agencies built up over decades were demolished, disarmed or defunded...public employees took it on the chin...
NH public employees rush to retirement Boston Globe ...Public employees in New Hampshire are rushing to retire as lawmakers debate changes in the state pension system...
The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education Alternet ...their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions -- and eliminating public schools...

Meet the think tanks paid to wage war on workers

We've bitched about the Koch brothers trying to destroy the middle class, and the DeVoses for their efforts to get rid of public education. Unfortunately, there are plenty more malanthropists where they come from. Today,  Mother Jones revealed more about the "think tanks" paid by plutocrats to attack workers. Writes Andy Kroll,

Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement. Its mission is simple: to back a constellation of state-level think tanks loosely modeled after Heritage that promote free-market principles and rail against unions, regulation, and tax increases.

Kroll reports the SPN was founded in 1992 by Ronald Reagan pal Thomas Roe—who also served on the Heritage Foundation's board of trustees for two decades. The SPN now has 59 "freedom centers," or affiliated think tanks, in all 50 states. It's funded by the usual suspects.

So when the plutocrats' candidates took over state legislatures and governors' offices in November, they played out a drama scripted by the SPN think tanks.

• Iowa's double-dipping governor, Terry Branstad used research by SPN's Public Interest Institute as justification for curbing public workers' collective bargaining rights. (It died in the Senate.)
• Michigan's Mackinac Center for Public Policy, recommended financial martial law, which passed in March. Now Detroit's teachers all have pink slips and Benton Harbor residents are being taxed without representation. 
• Nevada's Policy Research Institute (NPRI) came up with data to support a bill weakening collective bargaining rights.
• In California, the Pacific Research Institute puts out reports and op-eds to attack collective bargaining for teachers.
• In Wisconsin, the MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Policy Research Institute supported fellow Koch whore Gov. Scott Walker; the MacIver Institute even produced a video calling workers who protested in Madison communists and socialists.
• In Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs urged lawmakers in support of a bill to strip collective bargaining rights from government workers. (The governor is expected to sign the bill into law.)

And people made fun of Hillary Clinton for complaining about a "vast right-wing network."

These loony billionaires want to destroy public education

The charming DeVoses.

Many Americans despise the Koch brothers because of their tireless efforts to destroy the middle class. But there are other rich families that deserve our derision for the same reason -- the Coors heirs, the Walton heirs, the Mellon heirs. And Michgan's own DeVos family.

Richard DeVos made his billions on a pyramid scheme -- Amway. Now his son Dick and daughter-in-law Betsy are trying to eradicate public education. She is the former chair of Michigan's Republican Party; Dick ran for governor of Michigan in 2006.

According to People for the American Way,

Dick DeVos has used his family's fortune and status to create an intricate national network of non-profits, political action committees and federal groups known as 527's that effectively fund the political arm of the school voucher movement...Nowhere is the impact of the DeVos family fortune greater, though, than in the movement to privatize public education.

Dick DeVos lost the 2006 campaign for governor, in which he said nothing about his support of school vouchers (kind of like Scott Walker saying nothing about destroying unions when he ran for governor of Wisconsin).

DailyKos speculates the DeVoses

...realize that they are better off hiding behind their astro-turf organizations in states where they aren't so well-known...

And so we can just barely see their fingerprints in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington, D.C. and Wisconsin.

Talk to Action exposes their phony grass-roots efforts to "improve" education by -- well, attacking teachers, unions and public schools. Reports Talk to Action:

A new wave of school voucher bills is sweeping the nation...these new bills are largely promoted and funded by the billionaire DeVos family and a core group of wealthy pro-privatization supporters. They include Pennsylvania SB-1, soon coming to a vote in the PA Senate, and the "Vouchers-for-All" bill approved by the Florida Senate Education Committee on April 14. Betsy DeVos is at the helm of organizations that have set the stage for both bills, but you would never know it based on the propaganda being marketed to Pennsylvanians.

Betsy DeVos hid one of her anti-public education groups behind the neutral-sounding name, "All Children Matter" -- until it was fined $5.2 million for illegal campaign funding in Ohio and fined for misconduct in Wisconsin.

"All Children Matter" became "American Federation for Children," which (no surprise here) gets Koch money. And "American Federation for Children" campaigned against recall efforts for the eight GOP senators who supported Koch whore  Gov. Scott Walker's attacks on workers.

In Pennsylvania, the DeVoses and fellow Koch whores put vast sums of money behind candidates who support school privatization. Now, Gov. Tom Corbett proposes huge cuts in the state's education budget. The Senate will be voting on SB1, which gives vouchers to poor kids and costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Corbett won't tax gas drilling in Pennsylvania, though, because it would be unpatriotic.

In Indiana, "All Children Matter" put $700,000 into political campaigns, and now they're reaping the rewards. Reports the Journal and Courier,

Legislation to cut tens of millions of dollars from Indiana's public schools over the next two years -- giving it instead to private schools and home-schooled "virtual" students -- was only slightly weakened as a result the Democrats' walkout. Legislation to spend tens of millions more to expand charter schools remains intact as well, even though 80 percent of those schools are currently performing in the bottom 33 percent of all Indiana public schools.

In Florida, school choice is moving through the Legislature with the help of American Federation for Children.  The DeVos's got their tentacles into the Washington, D.C., schools with the recent expansion of a voucher program.

In Ohio, "All Children Matter" still hasn't paid its $5.2 million fine, but TribToday reports

Ohio Gov. John Kasich pushes a $55.5 billion budget proposal that would continue to expand school choice, doubling the number of school vouchers in the state and lifting a cap on community schools.

And just so we're all clear on this, the privatization folks' darling is former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Rhee is now mired in a cheating scandal. (We're not the teensiest bit surprised.)

Oh, and Dick DeVos has a Faceook page. You might want to comment on it.