Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s plan to bust public sector unions and replace local control with centralized power in Lansing with this army of unelected and all-powerful emergency financial managers (EFM) has ties to the same union busting effort in Wisconsin.
Mother Jones magazine did a piece on the EFM bills Snyder signed into law earlier this month that gives an EFM, after just two days of training, the power to void union contracts, run a school district, fire the elected boards and councils, call for millage elections, disincorporate or dissolve the municipal government and kill collective bargaining.
Last month Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was pranked when he thought he was talking to conservative billionaire David Koch, one of the Koch brothers who has bankrolled teabaggers and is financing the current union-busting movement, on the phone when he was really talking to a liberal blogger that showed Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill” was just a ploy to bust unions. The Mother Jones article shows that the Koch brothers are also behind the effort in Michigan. Like Walker, Snyder is creating budget deficits by taking away money from school districts and local governments with a $1.8 billion gift to businesses, allowing more EFMs to be needed.
The article says that since 2005, the rightwing Michigan think tank “Mackinac Center for Public Policy has urged reforms to Michigan law giving more power and protection to emergency financial managers.” “…In January, the free-market-loving center published four recommendations, including granting emergency managers the power to override elected officials (such as a mayor or school board member) and toss out union contracts. All four ended up in Snyder's legislation.”
The think tank has a history of union-busting and support for privatization, especially going after teacher unions. The article goes on to say that “the Mackinac Center does not disclose its donors. But a review of tax records shows that the group's funders include the charitable foundations of the nation's largest corporations and a host of wealthy conservative and libertarian benefactors. Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center's donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation ($69,151), founded by the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, who, with his brother, David, is a major backer of conservative causes,” including the union busting efforts in Wisconsin and funding teabaggers.
7 comments:
One question. Are you sure about the fact that EFMs can fire an elected board? I think that was indeed part of the original legislation, but I keep hearing that section was removed or changed.
I seriously don't know, and I wondered if you have any insight.
Yes.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2011-2012/billanalysis/Senate/htm/2011-SFA-4214-U.htm
Why is the union pensions tied up in Koch industries? They invest in his companies. If its all true as you claim it is, I find that funny too. You have a domestic terrorist trying to destroy wall street and he is of the unions and then you have union pensions tied into wall street AND koch industries.
I see the Koch Bros gave Harry Reid $30,000
Pension boards only invest in one industry? They are free to invest in companies like Koch Industries, but I would rather see them invest in more honest companies. Many people and boards who invested in Wall Street and companies like Enron lost millions. It seems kind of funny to me that American businesses earned record profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, according to a Commerce Department report, yet we are cutting things like Heard Start and Planned Parenthood. It makes no sense.
The only domestic terrorist I know of are Timothy McVeigh and other right-wingers like Scott Roeder.
Corporations routinely play both sides, but they don’t get Democrats to do their bidding like the Koch Brothers got Scott Walker and other anti-middle class Republicans to jump.
Damn those Koch brothers donating to Dems.
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