Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The deVos bullies have their bully boy where they want him now .. Mike Pumford's story in yours says it all ..

"Mike Pumford knows what it's like to be on the wrong side of the DeVoses. A former high school teacher and public school administrator, he was elected to the state House in 1998 as a moderate Republican, and he publicly opposed Dick and Betsy's push to expand charter schools and introduce school vouchers. (In 2000, Dick and Betsy helped underwrite a ballot initiative to expand the use of vouchers and lost badly.)

When Pumford ran for reelection in 2002, a DeVos-funded group called the Great Lakes Education Project .. http://www.glep.org/ .. blanketed his rural district with glossy flyers calling him a puppet of the Michigan Education Association .. http://www.mea.org/ .. and a "tax-and-spend Republican" for backing an increase in cigarette taxes. "They just kicked my ass in that election," he says. And though he eked out a victory, the DeVoses got the final word. When Pumford asked for the chairmanship of the subcommittee overseeing public education funding, he says, then-House Speaker Rick Johnson told him there was "no way in hell we can give it to you." Why? It would piss off the DeVoses. (Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.)

In 2004, Pumford quit politics in disgust. "I spent a lot of time fighting bullies," he told me. "Kids tend to bully with their mouths and fists. Billionaires tend to bully with their pocketbooks.""

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/devos-michigan-labor-politics-gop

.. the deVos's obviously old money, and of the 0.1%ers who as the rich also feel they are the privileged ones who believe they and their kind only should run the show .. they put money and power ahead of most everything else .. what else can i think when i see them opposing increasing taxes on cigarettes? .. when all the evidence is that less smoking saves society health costs in the long run .. they hate unions and part of their strategy to gain political advantage is, as well as giving to conservatives, to attack unions as the funding base of the Democrats .. there are a few posts on the board making that point ..

See also point 2. She is an ardent supporter of school vouchers and charter school expansion
inside in my first reply .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126778821