Democracy Tree
Watchdog Commentary on All Three Branches of Government

More GOP shenanigans to report:

It’s been a busy news day for ballot initiatives in Michigan…throw in a little legislative hypocrisy, and we’ve got fun, fun, fun — if you are a Republican, that is…

First, the Wolf Hunt Referendum that gathered over 250,000 signatures to put the question to popular vote finally earned their spot on the 2014 ballot. However, the effort is now reduced to a hollow victory and the vote will be little more than a pro forma exercise after the recent legislative end-run that enabled wolf hunting to proceed against the wishes of most Michiganders. Bottom line: 43 wolves will die for sport in the Upper Peninsula this year.

Also today, the Board of State Canvassers approved the language of the ballot proposal that would require individuals and employers to purchase a special rider policy for abortions under the Affordable Care Act. The language of the petition specifies that even in the case of rape or incest the policy is required. Gov. Snyder recently vetoed a bill with similar language. The approval process has no political component — the Board of Canvassers merely looks for clarity and accuracy — a bureaucratic “spell check” if you will. Yet still, another bad day for women’s reproductive rights in Michigan.

Saving the best for last….

Democracy Tree is always on the look-out for hypocrisy in governance, and today did not disappoint! A couple of weeks ago, we reported that the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Public Act 53 of 2012 which prohibits the automatic deduction of union dues from teachers checks even if they agree to it. Well, today State Sen. Arlan Meekhof (R-30) was joined across the aisle by Sen. Rebekah Warren (D-18) in sponsoring SB 283 which makes it easier for employers to automatically deduct political contributions to PACs and 401(c)(4)s from payroll. The bill amends Public Act 388 of 1976 which required annual written confirmation from employees to allow the deduction.

Amy Kerr Hardin

Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution in the Michigan House today compelling the U.S. Congress to “investigate the actions taken by the Internal Revenue Service and its agents that targeted and scrutinized specific organizations seeking tax-exempt status”. The resolution specifically cited the reason to launch a congressional probe as being that “the names and policy positions flagged were from organizations whose political ideologies are contrary to those of the governing executive administration.”

While Democracy Tree isn’t questioning the need to shed a little congressional daylight on the issue, there are some less than subtle distinctions and caveats that must first be fully acknowledged:

First, for GOP pundits and lawmakers to play the wounded kitten, howling that this was all politics, citing their suspicions that the Obama Administration was the hidden hand in unfairly singling-out certain 501(c)(4)s for additional scrutiny based on potential and unsubstantiated illegal politcal activities, and then to demand (often in the same breath) that congress investigate their unsubstantiated claim that the Obama Administration orchestrated the whole thing for political reasons…well, it’s all a tad-bit disingenuous. While Hammurabi’s law may have supported the reciprocal arrangement, it appears we are stuck in a perpetual causality loop of political gamesmanship.

The glaring truth is, Michigan GOP lawmakers have actually shown their hand by putting their political motives in writing in the form of this resolution. They’re not even denying they are using their political office to conduct a witch hunt….an act they wholly condemn the IRS for. 

Next, there is an argument to made that this “scandal” is of GOP origins in the first place. Alec MacGillis, of The New Republic, put it this way:

The laws and regulations that the [IRS] Cincinnati crew so haplessly tried to enforce were not the result of a liberal dream agenda. They were the result of a triumphant conservative assault on a campaign finance system that has prevailed since the 1970s. 501(c)(4)s have emerged as the latest way to skirt limits and disclosure requirements for campaign contributions, an end-around that was given a big boost by recent court rulings, including Citizens United. If many big-government liberals had their way, there would be no office in Cincinnati vetting 501(c)(4)s at all because they would not exist in anything like their current form. How do we know this? Because there was a vote in Congress to force disclosure of major donors (those giving more than $10,000) to 501(c)(4)s, and most Democrats voted for it. Forcing donor disclosure would greatly reduce the appeal of that tax exemption, and would thereby reduce the need for civil servants to sift through filings and send out time-consuming, inane questions. But the Disclose Act was blocked by Republican opposition.

Another key point to consider is that, although the IRS may not be the best organization to conduct these kinds of investigations, particularly because they lack the capacity to do so, a congressional probe designed to discredit their clumsy policies will certainly give a free pass for further abuse of the 501(c)(4) secret money vacuum, and thus have a profoundly chilling effect on curbing future illegal campaign finance activities. A point not lost on the far right.

This scandal is a win-win-win for the GOP. Just take a look at the numbers out today from Pew Research. Republicans overwhelmingly believe that the president was involved in the IRS decision to target certain groups.

But then, we already knew they just can’t resist a good conspiracy theory.

Amy Kerr Hardin

Under Gov. Snyder’s reckless steerage, GOP leaders in Michigan are no longer even making an effort to apologize for their opaque backroom deals and their mendacious attempts to manipulate an increasingly hostile and distrusting media.  

As if “skunk works” wasn’t bad enough in and of itself, Snyder went full-on Nixonian and denied having any knowledge of its existence. But, oops…It’s now reported that a Freedom of Information Act request for copies of emails from senior advisors revealed that the secretive group was hatched at the highest levels of the Snyder Administration. The Detroit News put it this way:

Records show the group was born during a mid-September lunch meeting between state Chief Information Officer David Behen, Snyder adviser Rich Baird and Richard McLellan, a GOP attorney who was separately studying ways to rewrite school funding laws at Snyder’s behest.

So, Michigan has a governor’s office that not only doesn’t understand the basics of transparency (afterall, Sunshine Week lasts… only a week), but apparently they also readily dissemble about the facts as clumsily as fibbing second graders. And that’s just the spin generated over the controversial “work group” — what about the group itself?

The types of pseudo-reforms “studied” in skunk works were little more than corporate idealogue attempts at ersatz education of the worst variety. In the spirit of the new Star Trek release last week, a Borg reference would be most fitting. The notion that technology should replace classroom instruction is absurd, and serves only to further inform us as to the complete incompetency of Snyder’s education advisors. Sure, technology is great for replacing paper in the classroom, but not the teacher. Only an idiot would disregard the primacy of human contact in the education equation. Interactive technology lacks the finesse and acuity of a living, breathing, caring instructor. Even students enrolled in cyber schools typically have a stay-at-home parent working full-time with them on their lessons, and they still fare comparatively poorly without the benefit of a certified teacher.

The primary difference between a cyber school and the skunk works plan was a brick-and-mortar facility to house the students and their cyber “teachers” — which would be an obscene hybrid of for-profit charter and cyber schools — indeed, a veritable GOP wet-dream. That was their plan…

Not so fast boys — cuz, uh oh…we’ve got some more transparency issues here. Sorry!

The State Board of Education expressed alarm last week over abuses found in the for-profit motives that have been introduced into Michigan public education. Specifically, as reported in MLive, they were “concerned about charter school lease agreements that far exceed standard market value rates”. The board felt that charter school finances require more scrutiny.

Republican State Senator Phil Pavlov scoffed at their concern, calling it mere “minutiae”, and went on to claim the board’s supposed lack of oversight was the real reason both Pontiac and Buena Vista school districts found themselves in a fiscal pickle this month.

Seriously, what color is the sky in Pavlov’s world?

Amy Kerr Hardin

Enjoy…

The spirit of democracy in Michigan is embodied here in this video sent from Melodee Mabbitt from Flint:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evXwsiXA3zE

Amy Kerr Hardin

Women’s reproductive rights are once again under threat in Michigan. A group called No Taxes for Abortion, along with Right to Life, is working on a proposed intiated law that would require individuals and employers to purchase a supplemental insurance policy to cover abortion services. This probably sounds familiar — back in February, Michigan Sen. Mark Jansen (R) proposed legislation (SB 137) which contains similar requirements. That bill is currently being considered by the Senate Committee on Insurance, and will likely stall there because Gov. Snyder vetoed the version that had passed in the House late last year.

There is a very real threat that this petition drive will meet with success where lawmakers have failed. Here’s why:

In Michigan, an initiated law requires the gathering of signatures equal to 8 percent of the number of voters in the previous gubernatorial election —  258,088 in this case.  Of course, any successful petition drive would obtain many more, yet this will likely be very easily accomplished. How? Religious organizations and churches are legally permitted to advocate for a petition drive.  While they may not legally endorse specific candidates, nor directly contribute money to political causes, they enjoy First Amendment protection on expressing political views, including those on petitions.

Once the required number of signatures are gathered and certified, lawmakers have 40 days in which to enact the initiated law or the question will become a ballot proposal in the Nov. 2014 election. Michigan saw six ballot proposals in 2010, so it is certainly not an impossible feat. The governor has no veto power over an initiated law, whether enacted legislatively or through popular vote. However, lawmakers may amend the proposal by a two-thirds vote and place it on the ballot, or they may change or repeal the law by a three-quarters supermajority. Conservative Michigan lawmakers are in no mood to come to the rescue of women’s reproductive rights. They have demonstrated their contempt for women’s health over and over again.

What can we expect to see happen in Michigan? Lawmakers will have the choice to enact the law without a popular vote, an attractive option for the far right, because they know the proposal would be in jeopardy at the ballot box.

Other states have also been actively chiseling away at insurance coverage for abortion services. A Guttmacher Institute report found the following:

• 8 states have laws in effect restricting insurance coverage of abortion in all private insurance plans written in the state, including those that will be offered through the health insurance exchanges that will be established under the federal healthcare reform law. Among them, 7 states limit coverage to life endangerment, 1 state limits coverage to life, rape, incest, fetal impairment and “substantial and irreversible impairment of bodily function”, and 7 states permit additional abortion coverage through purchase of a seperate rider and payment of an additional premium.
• 20 states restrict abortion coverage only in plans that will be offered through insurance exchanges.
• 18 states restrict abortion coverage in insurance plans for public employees.

It’s clearly a retrograde trend for women’s reproductive rights in our country. Michigan, welcome back to the 1950s.

Amy Kerr Hardin

Last week we learned that the Pontiac and Buena Vista school districts were teetering on the financial brink, and now they have both this week worked-out deficit reduction plans with the state, however Pontiac remains in very real danger of emergency management. Buena Vista will never see an Emergency Manager because the state can’t justify spending more on taking over the tiny district than its debt load altogether. The real reason they got a temporary bail-out was pure politics — the Snyder administration knew that now is not the time for closure of the district….this coming school year, that may change. 

A couple of weeks prior to all this, Democracy Tree reported that the very conservatively run Traverse City Area Public School District announced that their projected budget has them on track for crisis in just a couple of years.

Today it is Albion Schools. Last night their board voted to shutter the high school altogether, with no plan in place on how and where to educate 9th through 12th grades. Dr. Al Pheley, the school board president told Michigan Public Radio:

“We’re watching that happen in other school districts where they are facing the same challenges. How do you provide the education that our students need on the amount of money and the declining population.”

Two years ago the list of seriously struggling schools in Michigan included only 48, but that calculation was made prior to the subsequent budget cuts and policy hurdles inflicted on them under Snyder and the state legislature. When teachers and schools cried “foul” back then, few listened, but now we finally see major media identifying the problem as one of poor policies, bad laws, and cruel budgets.

Michigan’s schools are falling like dominoes.

Amy Kerr Hardin

In the ultimate Grinch move, Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz sold the city’s Santa and reindeer display for $1330, as part of 400 items being sold at auction. The bidding on old St. Nick started at $5, but a group of concerned citizens pooled their resources and scraped together the winning bid in an effort to preserve the tradition of displaying Santa and his sleigh atop Flint City Hall.

Flint resident Melodee Mabbitt, the city’s own little Cindy Lou, organized the effort and is quoted in the Flint Journal saying:

“This clearly isn’t just about Santa Claus. It’s about what it symbolizes to have an emergency manager auction Santa Claus off,…No elected official would auction Santa off online.”

“This is about the community standing up to an emergency manager.”

The citizens of Flint are among the most resilient and resourceful in the state. Hats off to them for continuing the fight against emergency management.

Amy Kerr Hardin

(and no, this is not a satirical article)

Yesterday, Democracy Tree wrote about the folly of treating education like a competitive sport, and today we find outgoing Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts extolling the virtues of pitting school against school, teacher against teacher, and student against student, in some Thunderdome corporate fantasy of his. The ex-GM executive, with no public education experience or public sector knowledge, was speaking about Michigan education to an audience in his hometown of Muskegon yesterday where he said “In my mind the future is all about competition.” MLive reported that he described competition between charter, parochial and public schools as a “healthy” development.

Contrast that opinion with that of Sue Smith, President of the Michigan League of Women Voters, former administrator at Central Michigan University and Mount Pleasant School Board member. Under her leadership, the LWV is closely tracking changes in Michigan education policy in the Snyder administration. Speaking at the Livonia Chapter of LWV last week, Smith had quite a few critical remarks to share on the state of public education in Michigan.

First, she hammered on the Education Achievement Authority, a scheme that is Emergency Manager Roberts’ brainchild project in which he spun-off the 15 lowest performing schools in DPS to get them off the student assessment records, and thereby make his leadership appear to improve the school district. The Observer & Eccentric reported Smith saying this about the EAA:

“For the most part, the state Board of Education is being left out of the plans for the EAA. I was at the hearing on the EAA bill and testifying against it on the basis that it took away the citizen control over schools.”

Smith went on to advise that the expansion of charter schools is not what lawmakers crack it up to be, and they are demonstrably not the educational panacea as claimed. Next, she questioned Snyder’s move to make per pupil funding transportable, a redux of the voucher push of a decade ago. Smith finds the governor’s plan simplistic, saying it does not take key factors, such as transportation costs into account, among other important concerns left completely unaddressed.

Michigan Republicans have demonstrated repeatedly their incompetence in understanding, let alone forming, education policy, and often flaunt their ignorance as a selling point. The House Committee on Education Chairperson, Lisa Posthumus-Lyons, attempted to sell her role as a parent as the only skill she needs to shape policy for students and schools across the state.

Michigan’s children deserve better than retired corporate execs and naive GOP neophytes running their schools into the ground.

Amy Kerr Hardin

Michigan lawmakers are completely missing the point when it comes to boosting student achievement. This week they are engaged in discussions about their plan to tie teacher compensation directly to student performance on standardized tests. The House Committee on Education, chaired by GOP novice Lisa Posthumus-Lyons, is currently considering HB 4625, a bill introduced by Republicans late last month intended to further erode hard-fought union protections — primarily tenure — under the guise of improving education in Michigan.

While it may be tempting to agree that teacher compensation should be directly linked to student achievement, that premise is deeply flawed on multiple levels, and implementation of such a plan would have highly destructive results on the quality of the already beleaguered institution of public education in Michigan.

The proposed legislation states that schools must “implement and maintain a method of compensation that includes job performance and accomplishments as the primary factor in determining compensation…” (sounds reasonable so far) …However, it goes on to require that the evaluation mechanism must be “primarily based on data on student growth as measured by assessments and other objective criteria” –  also known as standardized tests.

This scheme would force each individual educator to put all their energy into “teaching to the test”, much in the same way No Child Left Behind did to schools as a whole. Not only would it destroy teamwork through the unnecessary burden of teacher-against-teacher competition, but it would enforce a methodology that is proven to be harmful. Teachers would become coaches, and core curriculum subjects would become competitive sports.

In a Carnegie Foundation report on the hazards of reliance on standardized tests as a means of evaluating student achievement we find the following observations:

The public pressure on students, teachers, principals, and school superintendents to raise scores on high-stakes tests is tremendous, and the temptation to tailor and restrict instruction to only that which will be tested is almost irresistible.

In addition to offending our moral sense, teaching the actual items on a test (what James Popham calls “item teaching”) is counter-productive for the very practical reason that it makes valid inferences about student achievement almost impossible.

Americans certainly do love their tests, so how do successful countries get by without them? 

Diane Ravitch, an educational policy analyst and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, became interested in the educational system of Finland, a country known for producing top students with a nearly complete lack of student testing. In 2010, she inquired of a Finnish education expert:

“If students don’t take tests, how do you hold teachers and schools accountable?” He said that there is no word in the Finnish language for “accountability.” He said, “We put well-prepared teachers in the classroom, give them maximum autonomy, and we trust them to be responsible.”

I asked him if teachers are paid more for experience. He said, “Of course.” And what about graduate degrees? He said, “Every teacher in Finland has a master’s degree.” He added: “We don’t believe in competition among students, teachers, or schools. We believe in collaboration, trust, responsibility, and autonomy.”

Michigan GOP lawmakers however, are hell-bent for an educational system about as stimulating and useful as a NASCAR race — going round-and-round in meaningless circles — sporting corporate logos in its rush to privatize and corporatize our nation’s long and successful tradition of public education.

Another critical argument against HB 4625 is that it doesn’t even address the real impediment in American education — a problem that Michigan has become the new posterchild for — poverty.

The Economic Policy Institute analyzed the much quoted data from the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showing U.S. students lagging behind many other countries, and while not all of those nations necessarily test every child, the truth is that the reason we are behind is mostly economic. The report says:

Because social class inequality is greater in the United States than in any of the countries with which we can reasonably be compared, the relative performance of U.S. adolescents is better than it appears when countries’ national average performance is conventionally compared.

Because in every country, students at the bottom of the social class distribution perform worse than students higher in that distribution, U.S. average performance appears to be relatively low partly because we have so many more test takers from the bottom of the social class distribution.

If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and average math scores in the United States would be about the same as average math scores in similar post-industrial countries.

Bill Clinton famously said “It’s the economy stupid”, and now we can say in Michigan that the economy is making us stupid.

Unfortunately, the only idea the Snyder administration can dimly imagine to solve the growing problem is their doomed to fail Educational Achievement Authority — a corporate modeled favorite of pseudo-reform types that don’t know the first thing about education.

It’s time Michigan leaders focus on fixing poverty — and no, corporations can’t fix that either — minimum wage jobs aren’t helping anyone but Snyder and his cronies.

Amy Kerr Hardin

Leaders from the Detroit branch of the NAACP plan to meet on Monday to discuss filing another lawsuit against the new Emergency Manager law.

This is not a new battle for this group. They have been a key player in the statewide coalition, Stand Up for Democracy, which successfully petitioned and repealed the previous Emergency Manager law. The coalition, consisting of the NAACP, Michigan Forward, AFSCME, Rainbow PUSH, Reject Emergency Managers, and numerous faith-based and union groups, fought hard for two years to restore constitutional rights to communities and school districts where democratic rule had been suspended by the Snyder administration. In addition to the repeal, they successfully fended off multiple malicious corporate challenges, including “font-gate”, in which a shadowy third-party organization with corporate ties attempted to disqualify the petitions by making false claims that the font size was incorrect.

The battle is not over….

There remain numerous challenges to be explored against the new law. Among them are violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  and of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both claims hinge on the fact that the Emergency Manager law currently functions along racial lines — in the same way different sentencing guidelines for crack and cocaine may not facially appear discriminatory, but in application they clearly are. Additionally, there are a number of state and federal constitutional questions to be settled about the law.

Another option is found in an initiated law — this would involve petitioning for a law to overwrite portions of the current Emergency Manager law rather than repealing it. A referendum for repeal was not possible this time around because an appropriation was attached to the new version when passed in lame-duck session late last year, not to mention that the window for referendum closed about six weeks ago.

Last year, the coalition, working with a number of leaders, petitioned Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene on the previous Emergency Manager law. This remains a possibility again, but the federal government has been hesitant to meddle in state affairs. However,  that may change when (not “if”) the situation across Michigan becomes dire, affecting more than a handful of communities. Schools and municipalities have all had their funding slashed by the Snyder administration in favor of lavish corporate tax cuts completely untethered to job growth. It’s only a matter of time before they are all afflicted. 

This week, Michigan has seen two additional school districts come under threat of emergency management — Pontiac and Buena Vista. The prior due to systemic and structural issues that face all Michigan schools, and the latter due to mismanagement problems. Pontiac will likely join Detroit Public Schools, Muskegon Heights and Highland Park Schools in emergency management.  These districts will soon find themselves in good company as hundreds of financially starved schools across the state can’t keep the doors open and the lights on. 

In 2011, tiny Suttons Bay Public Schools faced a $500,000 budget shortfall. The Superintendent used the threat of emergency management to squeeze the community into making up the difference. Of course what he didn’t tell them was that the state would never take over a district with such a small budget — the Emergency Manager apparatus itself costs more than $500,000.

Democracy Tree wants to know what Snyder plans to do with all these struggling smaller districts and townships. Dissolving them won’t eliminate the need for the public service they provide. It is suspected that the governor doesn’t have a clue because that would involve actual investment in the future of Michigan, as opposed to short-sighted, corporate-style, cut-back management for window dressing quarterly reports. 

Amy Kerr Hardin