Political economist Robert Reich explains the Koch machinery and how it uses the Mackinac Center to protect and extend their already enormous fortunes.
A network of think tanks designed to come up with findings the Kochs want.
Author: DPratt
Koch Industries Buys Its Way Into Public School Classrooms
While it’s well known the Koch brothers are leading funders of corporate politicians, as well as right wing think tanks like the Mackinac Center, it’s less well known that they have a growing interest in education.
This includes essentially buying university programs, including programs in Florida and Kansas, and more recently in North Carolina, and through their faux grassroots group, Americans for Progress, heavily funding local school board races.
It recently came to light that Koch Industries Chairman David Koch is directing a non-profit created to conduct public school classes designed to instill free market principles:
To accomplish this, an existing Koch non profit, Youth Entrepreneurs, was re-purposed by a group inside Koch Industries calling itself the “Wu-Teach Clan,” evidently taking their names from the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan.
Their imagined hipness does not extend to their internet savvy: their work became public when everything they produced (including email exchanges with David Koch) was discovered in an online Google Group, to which they failed to restrict public access.
With wife Elizabeth serving as chairman, Youth Entrepreneurs is offering “a high school free market and liberty-based course” including teacher training at Koch Industries Headquarters. So far, the classes are offered in Kansas, Missouri, Georgia and online. Such an offer is hard to turn down:
Youth Entrepreneurs pays teachers a stipend, supplies them with classroom materials, guest speakers and field trips, and offers students scholarship opportunities.
Although the official purpose of these classes is to provide students “business and entrepreneurial education and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society,” the actual curriculum (much of which is provided by Koch-funded think tanks) shows the real aim:
The Google Group material included a list of myths the Koch Industry staffers hoped to counter:
- Corporatism v. Free-market Capitalism
- Deregulation is what caused recession in 80s, Economic problems of today
- Rich get richer at the expense of the poor
- FDR/New Deal brought us out of the depression
- Government wealth transfer programs help the poor
- Private industry incapable of doing functions that public sector has always done
- Unions protect the employees
- People with the same job title should be paid the same amount
- Minimum wage, “living wage,” laws are good for people/society
- Capitalist societies provide an environment for greed and materialism to flourish
- Socialist countries do just fine, people have great lives there (using this as proof that socialism works)
The curriculum includes videos produced by the Charles Koch-chaired Institute for Humane Studies, housed in Virginia’s George Mason University. One defends price gouging by arguing anti-gouging laws fail to address shortages. Another asserts that the gender pay gap exists because of “differences in the choices that men and women make.”
The Koch financed effort to move public policy to its corporate world view now includes national, state as well as local political campaigns, a nationwide network of right wing think tanks, university institute creation and now public school classes manufactured by Koch Industries.
None of this should be too surprising if you know the Koch’s more distant past.
Will the Koch Brothers Target Your School Board Next?
To the Koch brothers, “free markets” depend on smaller and therefore weaker government. And you’d think an outfit like theirs would focus on the biggest government, and spend its time spending vast amounts of money designed to shrink the federal government.
And they do, but they don’t stop there. The Kochs direct their attack at government in all its forms. From the Michigan House of Representatives, most notably by buying everything from airtime to a rental tent on the Capitol lawn to support the sudden push to enact Right to Work in 2012, to even school elections, including a recent one in Grand Rapids.
Before the November 3, 2015 election, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity spent $23,271.23 to defeat a Grand Rapids school bond proposal designed to renovate and replace aging buildings, upgrade technology and improve the security of the schools. This included a usual AFP tactic: dishonest robo calls.
The bond went through anyway, thanks to a local grassroots campaign. But this is not an isolated case.
In Jefferson County Colorado, a sleepy, low-turnout school board election in 2013 saw three free-market conservatives elected with to the delight of that state’s right wing think tank, The Independence Institute. When the new board decided to refuse to bargain with the unions, offer vouchers and rewrite a US history course to make it more “patriotic,” the parents awoke and began work to recall the board.
In perhaps the highest spending school board election in history (AFP spent more than $250,000, and the Independence Institute’s 501(c)(4) political arm, Colorado Independent Action, spent at least $450,000), the new board members were recalled on November 3rd.
At one point, the school board president facing recall filed an ethics complaint against himself.
This battle is the subject of “Education, Inc.” a film produced by a Colorado parent who decided their story needed national attention.
Education, Inc. examines the free-market and for-profit interests that have been quietly and systematically privatizing America’s public education system under the banner of “school choice.”
This new target joins other Koch strategies designed to rewrite public policy in their corporation-centered vision. This includes its growing campaign to buy university academic programs. In 2013, this spending reached $19.3 million and included 210 colleges.
The Kochs have also effectively created a third, corporate political party, Freedom Partners, which intends to outspend the Democratic and Republican parties by the end of the current election cycle.
But then even the Kochs aren’t willing to take on everyone.
It Still Pays to Be Member
Since the Mackinac Center’s founding, the fight to neuter unions has been on. We’ve seen it in the newspapers, on TV, in the mailbox, in emails, and online in every available form: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. “Save some money: quit the union.”
Only it doesn’t work that way. Even after 28 years, it still pays to be a member.
The advantage to union membership is obvious, even after years of attacks. When you have numbers, you have leverage. You can affect change in your school, for your kids and in your wallet. This advantage is even clearer if you go back a few years:
What’s clearer still is why the Mackinac Center wants you to quit: you cost too much. You can be replaced, for a year or two anyway, with a new graduate, until he or she gets tired of the long hours, low pay, abuse and lack of respect and finds another line of work.
The Center of the Corporate Think Tank World is in Grand Rapids This Week
The State Policy Network (SPN) is made up of 65 state-based right wing think tanks, including Michigan’s Mackinac Center. It serves as a coordinator of the legislative priorities of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):
Where ALEC connects lobbyists with state legislators and promotes corporate-drafted model legislation, SPN affiliates provide the ground support. After an ALEC bill is introduced in a state, the SPN affiliates create the appearance of in-state support for the effort, generating “studies” or “news” stories purporting to show the benefits of the legislation or drumming up a façade of grassroots support.
That process is in fast forward this week in Grand Rapids, where the Mackinac Center is hosting SPN’s annual meeting at (where else?), the Amway Grand Hotel. Among the many sessions is one devoted to helping think tanks justify keeping their funders secret:
This is a new tactic to defend secret funding: a newly-minted constitutional right to anonymous speech by spending money. This is an alternative to the long-employed “revealing our funders would put them in physical danger” cover story, or as previous Mackinac Center President Joe Lehman directly put it: “revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion.”
This sort of spin is important to the Mackinac Center. Without it, their long-standing advocacy of transparency would look two-faced. As is evidenced in an upcoming Lansing event:
Other sessions at the SPN conference offer help in turning public and legislative opinion, and show how the corporate culture colors every aspect of the SPN’s method:
- use the tactics of top sales people to selling [sic] public policy;
- state legislators from around the country answer questions on how to stand out and move your policies from ideas to action;
- connect our ideas with the worries of individuals;
- a mock interview while receiving [sic] personalized critiques and feedback on how to better tailor your message for TV;
- Combat Your Critics and Capture the Conversation: Taxes, Unions, and Education
Much more is available about this event from the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch, in How SPN “Think Tanks” Will Spin ALEC’s 2016 Agenda.
The Mackinac Center Resorts to Spam. Again.
The Mackinac Center has long complained about the misuse of school resources. When campaign material was sent to school email addresses, they were outraged.
They complained in another case that “It’s just wrong for government to use taxpayer resources to promote one point of view,”
The Mackinac Center’s justification has always been that spamming school email accounts isn’t illegal because it’s not political. But the truth is that the aim is to reduce MEA membership to clear the political field for their ultimate goal: allowing corporations to monetize public schools. For-profit charter schools, on-line schools, whatever it takes.
But this summer’s emails are different. Notice at the bottom:
“This is a commercial message.” This phrase is added to avoid FCC rules that bring these emails into the CAN-SPAM law (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act).
Violations of this law include a fine of up to $16,000 for each email. But as an “email marketing” (spammer) website says: “Fortunately, being in compliance of CAN-SPAM Law is quite simply [sic] if you follow a few basic rules.” Including adding that phrase.
Because this law was so easy for spammers to evade, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was adopted. But this one isn’t so easy to handle. It covers email spamming to cell phones, and as the FCC site simply says, if you haven’t given prior written consent to getting this spam on your phone, you can file a complaint:
Annoyed? File a complaint: consumercomplaints.fcc.gov,
Or call: 1-877-382-4357
A Blatant, Repeated Lie Designed to Get You to Quit
The MEA does not spend member dues on political campaigns.
The Mackinac Center knows this. It also knows using member dues for political campaigns is illegal and if any organization ever wanted to see the MEA charged with a crime, it’s the Mackinac Center. So the fact that no complaint has been filed ends the question of whether campaigns get dues money.
But they and their surrogates continue to tell this knowing lie. Most recently in an Detroit News Op Ed, Getting free from the MEA, written by Allegan County teacher Rob Wiersema:
My dues money has been air-dropped directly into the pockets of political candidates.
Wiersema has long had it in for the union. Last summer, during the Mackinac Center’s Please Do Us a Favor and Quit Your Union campaign, Wiersema argued in another Op Ed that you should lose your salary schedule:
The step scale system also distorts the true market value of teachers. Most of us, including myself (sic) are paid above market value…Because wages are high, districts must restrict the number of teachers hired.
Wiersema is not some lone advocate. He has long served as a mouthpiece for the Center and spends his summers speaking on their behalf to defund the MEA.
Last August he authored an anti-MEA email sent by the Mackinac Center to school email addresses, appeared on a Heritage Foundation (the national equivalent and model for the Mackinac Center) video cast the same day he was featured on the AAU faux union’s website. He’s made these and many other arguments for the Mackinac Center.
Propagating this lie and working to reduce the advantages unions can provide for their members is standard procedure for the Mackinac Center. But then it would be for an advocacy organization that parades as a research think tank. Their very existence is premised on a lie.
Overspin From the Mackinac Center: Teachers Quitting Because They Don’t Like Pensions.
The Mackinac Center recently reinforced its willingness to spin any news it comes across as supporting its funder’s positions. This time it found a way to spin the increasing number of teachers quitting their jobs as an indictment, of all things, of the state pension system:
According to one estimate, just 43.4 percent of teachers will stay in the system for the 10 years required to become fully vested…That means the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System, which carries a $26.5 billion unfunded liability, is not only a raw deal for taxpayers, it’s not a very good deal for most teachers either.
Ignoring the fact that MPSERS is underfunded, because, well, the legislature underfunded it, and did it while the tanking economy cut the value of the system’s assets, concluding that teachers leave because the pension is “not a very good deal” is willful ignorance. Teachers and other school staffers are leaving because the right, led by the Mackinac Center itself, has spent years vilifying them while making it harder for them to pay their bills.
Blinding itself to this reality, the Center’s Jack Spenser suggests teachers quit “to move, switch jobs, stay home with children or for another reason.” Only someone completely removed from the realities of working in Michigan public schools would submit that teachers leave their professions to stay home with the kids. You’d have to be funded by billionaires and corporations to think more than one or two school staffers in the state are in a position to do this.
All of this is an entree for the Center to again recommend shutting down the state pension system, including MPSERS.
As only the Mackinac Center could do, the article uses data from a study to make its case, while ignoring the conclusions and even the title of the study: “Friends Without Benefits: How States Systematically Shortchange Teachers’ Retirement and Threaten Their Retirement Security.”
For example:
- States are shoring up the financial aspects of plans while making the benefits worse.
- State leaders must resist the temptation to fix only the most pressing financial problems, which risks making their state less attractive to current or future teachers.
Sound familiar?
A Retiree Speaks Out: We Fought For Your Benefits. Don’t Throw Them Away With Your Membership!
I recently had the opportunity to view information concerning the number of public school employees who either are not paying their union dues or have opted out of the union.
When I started teaching we had no benefits and had to pay for them ourselves. I was in the trenches along with many others throughout the state fighting to get you, yes you, the benefits you enjoy today.
The main goal of groups like ALEC and the Mackinac Center is to destroy public schools. When you don’t pay your dues or opt out of the MEA you are doing exactly what they want.
if you want to experience what it was like when I started teaching, tell your superintendent that you want to pay your full insurance premium and that you do not want sick leave, personal days or any other benefits. Try this for a year and see if it works for you.
REMEMBER IT WAS THOSE OF US IN THE UNION YEARS AGO WHO FOUGHT FOR YOUR BENEFITS!
Do you want to destroy the union that helped you get these benefits, the union that is continuing to work for you today? I know some of you have children to raise and a mortgage, etc.. In our tough years of bargaining, we all had the same challenges but we stayed united and succeeded to get the benefits you enjoy today.
If you still continue to not pay your dues or opt out , I hope each morning when you look in the mirror you way, “I helped to weaken the MEA and assisted in destroying public schools.”
TOGETHER YOU BARGAIN, ALONE YOU BEG.
Earl Eliason
Retired Teacher
Mackinac Center Shills for AAE Faux Union
The Mackinac Center’s summertime “Do Us a Big Favor and Quit the MEA” campaign has returned to a golden oldie: post cards and emails shilling for the Association of American Educators (AAE), the faux union created by many of the same right wing billionaires that fund the Mackinac Center.
As described in today’s MEA Voice Online, AAE membership boils down to overpriced liability insurance, and offers none of the other resources available to MEA members. Like access to real attorneys.
AAE offers only an attorney referral service, a list of attorneys you can hire if you want to. MEA attorneys are free to all members, and they save member’s jobs every day.
This kind of thing can happen to anyone. A bus driver, for example:
As this member wrote:
MEA has your back.
MEAMatters 