Michigan Populist Blog

Michigan Republicans have been on a mission to prevent voter fraud.  Meanwhile, at least two high ranking Republican officials have been implicated in election fraud.  Michigan’s 11th Congressional Representative, and one time potential Presidential candidate, Republican Thaddeus McCotter submitted only 244 valid signatures to get his name on the ballot for reelection.  Apparently, the other 1,200 or so signatures he submitted were fakes.  McCotter has since resigned from office forcing a special election to fill the remaining two months of his term.  The special election will cost Michigan taxpayers as much as $650,000.  On the heels of that controversy, State House Speaker Jase Bolger and Representative Roy Schmidt were implicated in a scheme to get a fake Democrat to run in the 76th House district.  The scheme worked like this:  Schmidt switched from being a Democrat to a Republican at the last minute and he and Bulger attempted to pay a naive young man to put his name on the ballot as a Democrat.  This scheme would have made it almost impossible for a legitimate Democrat to beat Schmidt as a write in candidate.  How can someone run as a “fake candidate” in Michigan you ask?   The answer is that in Michigan you can run for State Representative by paying a $100.00 filing fee instead of gathering 200 valid signatures.  You can run for State Senator by paying a $100.00 filing fee instead of gathering 500 valid signatures.  However, if you are an independent candidate you cannot buy your way onto the ballot.  The signatures, and the process of validating them, is what stopped McCotter from pulling off election fraud.  The filing fee is what allowed Bolger and Schmidt to nearly succeed in their version of election fraud.  It is time to eliminate the filing fee, and force candidates to collect signatures, to help prevent future election fraud.  Republicans can go a long way toward improving their image, and our state’s F grade on governmental inegrity, by passing this reform along with financial disclosure laws for our elected officials.  They have passed 603 laws in the past 18 months.  Why not two more? 

Note: The Democratic party in Michigan does not provide support for candidates in the primary if they are being challenged by a Democratic candidate.  This is another reason that Republicans may have run fake candidates in the past.

According to a study by Metlife, as reported on in The Nation, job satisfaction is dropping amongst teachers.  Only 44 percent of teachers described themselves as “very satisfied,” and almost a third of teachers are considering leaving the profession.  This news comes as the conservative organization the State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF) is set to air an attack ad in select states including Michigan.  The SGLF is essentially the 501(c)3 arm of  The Republican State Leadership Committee.  The Republican State Leadership Committee calls itself a “national organization whose mission is electing Republicans to the office of Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State and legislator.”    

The ad hits below the belt referring to teacher’s unions as bullies and implying that unions are the the reason the U.S. is scoring lower than the Chinese on the international science and math test known as the PISA.  Not surprisingly, the Chinese don’t play fair when it comes to these tests.  While most countries taking the PISA use a sampling of all the students in their country, the Chinese kids that topped the PISA were from Shanghai, perhaps China’s most advanced city.  No kids were tested from China’s rural areas where the droput rate sometimes reaches 40%!  Besides, even the Chinese have concerns about the the importance of these tests.  Some are concerned that creating “test-takers” comes with the cost of a poor imagination and low creativity.  They are also concerned that creating “test-takers” comes at the expense of an enjoyable childhood.  Not only is the Chinese comparison suspect, so is the connection between unions and test scores.  In Finland, 95% of its teachers are in unions.  That is significant because Finland often holds the top spot in these type of tests, and they are often regarded as having the strongest education system in the world.  Back in the U.S. 9 out of the top 10 scoring states on the NAEP test are states with where school teacher’s unions are strong.

These attack ads should be seen for what they are, political action.  While these conservative organizations would like you to believe they care about kids, they really only care about making money and political power.  They will do anything to get conservatives elected so they can pass their extreme policies including privatizing education in order to profit from it.

Note: The SGLF and the RSLC share the same address and the SGLF’s page states that they are “affiliated with the Republican State Leadership Committee.”

The Michigan Education Association is going all-in with the Protect Our Jobs campaign.  The MEA, and most Michigan unions, are hoping that Michiganders will agree that collective bargaining rights should be protected under the Michigan constitution.  At a recent meeting of MEA leaders, five factions of the MEA emptied their savings accounts into a joint kitty in hope of getting the collective bargaining amendment passed.  The largest contributor was the MEA-Retired who donated a cool million dollars.  In all, 1.8 million dollars was contributed towards the effort.

While the money being contributed is both important and impressive, it is not the end-all be-all.  The people who support the Protect Our Jobs campaign are up against some of the richest individuals in the country, including our very wealthy Governor.  It is unlikely that they can be outspent.  However, they can be outmanned.  The collective bargaining amendment is good for just about everyone in Michigan besides rich CEOs.  The challenge is to get people to understand that fact.  Word of mouth may be the most important resource in this campaign.

Many believe that the Protect Our Jobs campaign could be the last hope for unions in Michigan.  Republican legislators have been like vultures picking away at collective bargaining rights since they took office a year and a half ago.  Now there isn’t much meat left on that bone.  Protecting collective bargaining with a constitutional amendment would allow unions, and therefore the middle class, to take flight again.