Inside the Snyder Transition Team...
Keeping the King’s Discipline: Mackinac Center’s Demands on Rick Snyder
The Midland, Michigan based Mackinac Center for Public Policy's shot over the bow of Governor CEO-elect Rick Snyder’s new Transition Team, appointments and administration, has already been fired.
Immediately after Snyder won the Michigan Republican Party the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the arm twisting of Rick Snyder continued with an Open Letter from the Mackinac Center to Rick Snyder...
Cross posted to BFM.
More on the Mackinac Center's Letter and Observations BELOW...
UPDATE: Rick Snyder's Attorney General's Office taken over by Mackinac Center operatives -
Richard McLellan, appointed Senior Counsel, and is acting as liaison with Governor-elect Rick Snyder's transition team for Bill Scheutte AG Elect.
RELATED: Rick Snyder Appointments Unabridged Profiles HERE
RELATED: Rick Snyder Transition Team Profiles HERE
RELATED: Snyder Transition Challenges and Analysis now posted HERE.
Michigan’s Oxymoron: Mackinac Center for ‘Public’ Policy
Hates Government, Loves Government Contracts & Public Assets
The Mackinac Center was created and backed by John Engler, Richard D. McLellan, Dick DeVos, and initially funded by Michigan’s Insurance Lobby and Dow Chemical, and an affiliate State level branch of the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., and part of large network of conservative organizations and numerous Right Wing think tanks and organizations in the conservative politics industry.
The Mackinac Center, based out of Midland, Michigan gets it's funding from a long list of conservative donors and sister organizations. It has multiple ‘media’ and internet outlets, including the Detroit News, and a long list of associated activities.
From the Mackinac Center: An Open Letter to Rick Snyder
What are your priorities?
August 13, 2010
By Paul Kersey
Director, Mackinac Center
[Paraphrased Content]
(1) ... you [Snyder] stated that you [Snyder] would sign a right-to-work law if you were presented with one, but that it was not part of your "agenda."
Can we [Mackinac Center and Right Wing Michigan GOP] conclude that right-to-work will not be made law during a Snyder administration?
(2) Would you [Snyder] consider taking teacher merit pay out of collective bargaining, allowing districts to reward teachers based on student performance without the need for union approval?
(3) Would you [Snyder] repeal the state's prevailing wage law...?
(4) Would you [Snyder] support repeal or substantive changes to the binding arbitration process for police and firefighters?
(5) ...would you [Snyder] pledge to reverse the forced unionization of small-business owners who provide day care out of their own homes?
(6) On the subject of union benefits - rationalizing benefits will likely entail a protracted legal and political battle with government employee unions. What steps would you take to ensure that the state is in a position to win these battles?
(7) ...in our [Mackinac Center] interview you hedged on whether or not you would support the removal of limitations on the number of charter schools in Detroit... You {Rick Snyder] appear to be open to this idea but say you need assurances about quality.
What sorts of assurances would it take to get you to "yes" on Detroit charters?
(8) Will you [Snyder] support litigation or legislation designed to dismantle federalized health care?
(9) The state's economic development programs seem to have become vulnerable to abuse - as illustrated by the RASCO and Hangar42 debacles... As a former MEDC director, it might be too much to expect you to tear down your handiwork, but...
... Would you support a sharp reduction in MEDC's funding and prerogatives until it has re-established its professionalism and competence?
Statement in the Mackinac Center for Public Policy Letter to Rick Snyder:
"... I [Paul Kersey, speaking on behalf of the Mackinac Center] suspect that making that clean break will be especially important for you [Rick Snyder]. Bernero is from the current governor's party [Michigan Democratic Party] and has the support of many of the same government employees, unions and other interest groups - what has been described as the political class - that backed Gov. Granholm."
Implied Threat of this Letter and Agenda of the Mackinac Center:
Can we expect you [Rick Synder] to tow the Mackinac Center company line, once referred to by John Engler as Engler’s "Administration in Waiting", or are we [the Mackinac Center] going to have to put you in your place right off the bat?
We will see what happens soon enough...
Additional Note:
One of the founders of the Mackinac Center, Richard D. McLellan, a paid lobbyist with Dykema Gossett PLLC and Michigan Insurance industry operative for decades, has been planning for the next gubernatorial Republican Administration for some time, on the project "Michigan’s Next Governor" in which a 200 question work sheet was created in September of 2009.
UPDATE#1: Richard McLellan named liaison with Governor-elect Rick Snyder's transition team, and Senior Counsel to AG Elect Bill Schuette.
UPDATE#2: Richard D. McLellan Declares His Vision for Snyder's Attorney General's Office (figure head Bill Schuette AG Elect), straight from McLellan in a Letter to the Detroit News:
Well-within AG's role
In response to your Nov. 4 editorial, "Snyder needs to keep big GOP majority on target":
When did the Free Press decide that Michigan's newly elected attorney general will not hold a policy-making office in this state? In pushing his tough-on-crime agenda, Attorney General-elect Bill Schuette is acting in the tradition of all his predecessors of the past 50 years.
The state attorney general is a constitutionally elected officer and possesses all the inherent powers of an attorney general. As the Official Record of Michigan Constitutional Convention stated: "The activities of the attorney general's office range over the entire breadth of state government. His scope of interest is as great as that of the governor."
Prisons, public safety, taxes and many other issues are important to the citizens of Michigan, and they need a strong attorney general to weigh in.
Richard D. McLellan
A member of Bill Schuette's transition team, Lansing
Also, 2010 Republican candidates for Governor of Michigan, Mike Cox and retiring long-time Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra, both spent days at the Mackinac Center offices. Although no ‘official visit’ to Midland was identified for Mike Bouchard, Bouchard did publicly embrace a number of the Mackinac Center’s positions.
Note: At the time of this posting, there has been no evidence uncovered by the authors indicating that Rick Snyder, who did an interview Ken Braun, Managing Editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential, the Mackinac Center’s internet ‘news’ hub, attended similar policy briefings and work sessions at the Mackinac Center.
From the Herman Melville story entitled Billy Budd Foretopman:
"And good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man..." shouted the young groundling being rowed from the merchantman to the Man-of-War the HMS Bellipotent, into the world of Master-at-Arms Claggert, where "patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel" and "flogging was the only answer...". For Billy, "his innocence was his blunder."
Will Rick Snyder and the Snyder Team, on Snyder’s Ship of State, the Merchantman "With Moderation", toe-the-line and hove to? Allowing his ship's crew to be removed and be impressed into service by Michigan's Radical Right Conservatives and Lobbyists?