After flurry of bad press, the Mackinac Center’s Tom Gantert decided to take the usual low road and suggested teachers are overpaid, implying they’re whiny.

Educators say they cannot ‘survive’ on one income

This in reply to an Oakland Press article describing the pay freezes faced by Michigan teachers and the second and third jobs they are forced to work.

The Center’s response drips with disgust at the complaints. It mentions at every opportunity summer breaks and lists the salaries of the teachers quoted in the Oakland Press article, ignoring the fact that few school employees have seen step increases, or any increases, in years. Gantert is quick to point to contract provisions that promise step increases in future years.

Which is of little help to a teacher paying bills in the present tense.

Every mention of step increases sends the message that the Center thinks them undeserved.

automatic, seniority-based “step-increase”

Which it does. Last year, during it’s annual summertime ‘Please Do Us a Favor and Quit the MEA’ campaign, the Center planted Op Ed articles in newspapers featuring ex-MEA member Rob Wiesema, who argued that step increases should be outlawed. NextTarget: Your Salary Schedule

The Oakland Press article also reproduced a flurry of Facebook comments, nearly all pro-teacher and therefore anti-Mackinac Center (which motivated its response), including:

Scott Lakeland Rolando – “Just got off my second job here today. FYI Oakland Press a first year teacher in the district I work for is eligible for food stamps. Trust me that’s not a ‘perk.’”

No other commenter put it as well as Jessica ‘Smith’ Pete.

“My husband and I are both teachers and work 3 jobs to make ends meet. We tutor kids on weekends, he cooks at a golf course, I wait tables at the golf course, and we just started a DJ business. On top of that, we drive a 15 year old car, don’t have cable, don’t have a home phone, and shop at the Salvation Army or accept hand-me downs. He has been teaching for 10 years and is frozen on step 1. I have been teaching for 10 years and am frozen on step 4. On top of these wage freezes we have endured four years of pay cuts, the last being a whopping 7.5%! Then you add the increasing cost to our health insurance and the need to go back to school to keep our jobs. At the end of the day I often wonder if it was worth it…all the schooling and debt to graduate into a career that is not valued nor pays it’s employees enough to put food on their own table or to take care of their own children. It’s a very sad time for public education. The politicians won’t stop starving us until we fail and become a ‘for profit’ business model.”

The Center is as out of touch with the profession as ever. In the article’s close, Gantert writes:

The figures cited here do not include health insurance and retirement benefits also given to school employees.

Given? School staffers aren’t ‘given’ health or retirement, thanks to the Mackinac Center’s work. This includes laws that force them to pay 20% of the cost of their health insurance, or everything above a hard cap, a law the Mackinac Center literally wrote. Add this to the every-increasing cost of staying in the state retirement system, the ‘cut your benefits or increase your contribution’ law, as well as the 3% contribution increase (which MEA Legal has been fighting for years), all backed enthusiastically by the Mackinac Center.

But then, the Mackinac Center has been pushing to shut down the state pension system for years. Which, of course, isn’t mentioned in the Center’s response.

Today’s Detroit News includes a column written by MEA President Steve Cook that does a spectacular job of summarizing the Mackinac Center’s attacks on the MEA as a way to accomplish their ultimate goal, monetizing public schools. 

Some find it curious that an “independent think tank” which claims to study public policy issues would spend so much time and money attempting to convince MEA members to opt out of their union. Along with their political activities, these activities clearly violate IRS regulations and their tax exempt status should be revoked. But the larger question is this: why is the Mackinac Center spending so much money attempting to persuade MEA members to quit the union?

The answer is simple. A loss of membership would weaken school employees’ strength at the bargaining table and in the political arena, allowing the center’s corporate backers to further privatize and profit from public education

Read it here. 

The Mackinac Center complained last week about “The False Media Echo Chamber.” It’s upset that news outlets are reporting that the current legislative road repair plans include budget cuts. It’s hardly worth debating the details of these plans, other than to point out that they both depend heavily on the politician’s favorite funding source: future growth. And when this growth fails to materialize…

But then the Center’s complaints ring hollow on two counts. The Mackinac Center’s plan to solve the roads problem is more straight-forward: cut the schools. Simple math gives you a $898 million cut: $255 million from public schools and $637 million from universities and colleges. No growth mumbo-jumbo here.

And the echo chamber reference. This from the quarterback of the right wing echo chamber. In a recent fundraising mailing, the Center used these gems:

I write to invite you to help fan this brushfire of liberty into an unstoppable blaze…

…will we choose the promise of the free market or the false comfort of welfare stat liberalism?

Taking on the union stranglehold … will be a major focus this year. As we pry the controlling fingers of union executives off the state budget process..

It shouldn’t be surprising that this hair-on-fire language sounds intelligent to the Mackinac Center’s base: tea party gubment-haters. The corporations that provide nearly all of the Center’s funding no doubt see this talk for what it is. More important to them, they know their money is well spent: the Mackinac Center writes op eds and poses as experts for news articles pushing the free market corporate line. And even more importantly, it gives legislative Republicans their marching orders. All of which serves the corporate bottom line.

Or maybe not. In yet another fundraising letter, the Center argues that unless they continue their battle, the EPA will start regulating backyard barbeques. And that’ll be just like what they did when they outlawed regular light bulbs (which they didn’t actually do.)

If the EPA follows through on its extremist agenda, then family reunions and church picnics may not survive…

As you may remember, this sky-is-falling language from a few years ago led the Republican legislature to pass a bill establishing that old fashioned incandescent light bulbs could still be manufactured in Michigan, no matter what the feds did.

Not that light bulbs had ever been manufactured in Michigan…

From the July 10th MEA Capitol Comments:  

For weeks, the Mackinac Center has been gearing up its campaign to convince members to drop their MEA membership. Last year, they used full-page newspaper ads and mailings in their strategy. But this year-they’ve gone too far. The Mackinac Center is hijacking public school employees’ emails and spamming their mobile phones with messages encouraging members to opt out of MEA.
Because they say they’re delivering a “commercial message” via phones and computers, you have a way to stop their harassment and the invasion of your privacy!

If you received an email from the Mackinac Center to your mobile phone without your permission-you can file a spam complaint with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). 

If you received an email from the Mackinac Center to your computer, you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

And you can also join Progress Michigan in its petition drive calling for the Mackinac Center to stop harassing Michigan school employees. Progress Michigan is standing with you in this fight to stop the Mackinac Center from spreading its anti-union propaganda.

The Mackinac Center does not have your best interest at heart. They’re behind bad laws and policies that attack public education and public school employees. Their latest tactics prove that they’ll stop at nothing to push their anti-union, anti-public education and anti-public school employee agenda. Don’t let them!

Yet another school worker is being used by the Mackinac Center to convince union members to quit. This time, Bob Mroczek, a Midland Parapro, writes:

Our members are paid hourly, between the minimum wage and $11 per hour. It is amazing to me that the $26,000 a year paid from us to the state and national unions gets us little outside of wage freezes. I ask the state and national union representatives: Have your wages been frozen?

Bob is being used by a front group that could not care less about his pay. The Mackinac Center literally wrote the 80/20 bill that forces every school employee to pay either 20% or everything above a hard cap for health insurance.

The proof of this is found in a 2011 email exchange between a group of Mackinac Center employees and Rep. Tom McMillin, the Chairman of the Michigan House of Representatives Education Committee.

The email exchange, which can be read in its entirety here, also shows that the Mackinac Center’s immediate goal is to outlaw government collective bargaining, and it’s ultimate goal is to put the MEA out of business. Helping students or saving money is not mentioned.

Add this to the list of Mackinac Center projects to gouge school staffers:

The Mackinac Center Pushes Plan to Fix Roads By Cutting Schools $892 million;

The Mackinac Center’s School Voucher Agenda;

Mackinac Center: Shut Down State Pension System;

Next Mackinac Center Target: Your Salary Schedule.

This is about killing off unions so schools can be sold off to corporations; it’s got nothing to do with helping you or the kids at your school. When the Center puts out it’s fundraising appeals, top billing goes to weakening unions. It’s their proudest achievement.

In order to get on with the business of privatizing schools, the Mackinac Center is more than willing to use school employees. Particularly those who haven’t paid attention enough to recognize their actual enemies.

In last week’s ‘Please, please do us a solid and quit your union” letter from Mary Davenport, an email that was sent to thousands of Michigan teachers using their taxpayer-funded work email addresses, Davenport parroted the Mackinac Center’s “pension spiking” invented outrage-of-the-week. 

 
Today, Eclectablog sets the record straight.  This arrangement has been legal and commonplace since the 60’s and outlawing it will cause, according to the non-partisan Senate Fiscal Agency, a $900 million cut to the school retirement system. An effect that the Mackinac Center is absolutely happy about: the more it’s in the red, the easier it’ll be to shut it down.