Last night, The Daily Show skewered Florida state Rep. Scott Plakon (R-Hypocrisyville) for pushing a policy requiring welfare applicants to be tested for drugs while failing to subject other Floridians who receive taxpayer dollars – like state legislators – to the same level of scrutiny.

Although this drug testing program has cost Florida taxpayers $200,000 and has been halted by a federal judge, many other states are scrambling implement similar rules. Last year, bills requiring drug screenings for welfare recipients were filed in 36 states, but passed in only Florida, Arizona, and Missouri. This year, states already hearing legislation on the matter include Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, to name only a few. 

Some of the Republicans in state legislatures considering welfare drug testing bills may find themselves on the other end of the plastic cup, so to speak. Some Democrats are objecting to the singling-out of only one of the many groups who receive taxpayer money by broadening the application of this principle. 

In Tennessee: 

G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, said lawmakers should have to take the same drug test that a new law would require for welfare recipients.

Hardaway said he has heard from his constituents and some have asked how the public can be sure that lawmakers are not on drugs.

He said the voter had a valid point, and he plans to file his General Assembly drug test bill if the welfare drug test issue surfaces before lawmakers. 

In Georgia (where a sponsor of that state’s welfare drug testing bill has been charged with a DUI, interestingly):

[Democratic state Rep. Scott] Holcomb’s bill, HB 677, would require anyone elected to serve in the General Assembly to undergo mandatory drug testing within three months of taking office or beginning any subsequent term. Failing would mean removal from office. “[W]e should lead by example,” Holcomb said, and “shouldn’t expect others to live by standards that we don’t uphold ourselves.” 

In Indiana, a bill that would require drug testing of both welfare recipients and state legislators is actually moving forward. 

[GOP state Rep. Jud] McMillin initially proposed a pilot program for drug testing only welfare applicants, but last week state Rep. Ryan Dvorak (D-South Bend) amended the bill to include drug and alcohol testing for lawmakers. … Indiana is the first state where lawmaker drug testing has actually advanced, though the measure's fate in the state senate is uncertain. 

Even some Republicans in the Missouri legislature have gotten on board with the drug-testing-of-state-legislators thing, judging by a bill filed last month. 

Bills targeting the needy for expensive, unnecessary, and invasive testing betray an ugly stereotype too many GOP legislators seem to hold. Assuming that citizens with extremely low -- or no -- income have substance abuse problems or are somehow “criminal” and “undeserving” of public assistance is a brand of bigotry that has no place in any state of our great nation. 

Much of the nation’s attention is focused on New Hampshire’s “first in the nation” primary today, but Granite Staters in particular shouldn’t allow themselves to be distracted from goings-on in the state capital. 

Some of the more extreme legislation percolating in the New Hampshire legislature has already garnered national attention—and a healthy dose of ridicule. 

...[S]ome of these citizen legislators are crazier than a Statehouse rat… 

New Hampshire House Bill 1148 would "require evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists' political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism." [...]

Jerry Bergevin, a Republican who introduced HB 1148, went further, telling the Concord Monitor that atheism was linked to Nazism and the 1999 Columbine school shooting.

"I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the idea to be presented," Bergevin said. "It's a worldview and it's godless." 

Bonus points for strict adherence to Godwin's law. Plus, the legislation itself is prima facie evidence against evolution. But it gets a few demerits for unoriginality.  You can do better, New Hampshire… 

House Bill 1580…requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

"All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived," is the bill's one sentence. 

But some of the other proposals that have surfaced in the New Hampshire statehouse aren’t as hilariously ludicrous. Two in particular are especially troubling, and both are retreads of proposals Democratic Gov. John Lynch vetoed last year. 

One such measure is voter ID legislation. Two separate bills that would require voters to present photo identification before casting ballots are already scheduled for committee hearings. Despite Gov. Lynch’s veto of last year’s attempts at voter suppression, misinformation regarding voting requirements abounds in New Hampshire. In fact, some voting rights groups are concerned about the effect of these ballot-box access falsehoods on today’s elections. 

Though a number of bills were passed in the state legislature last year that would require a photo ID, Gov. John Lynch (D) rejected the bills. There is currently no law in the state that requires a photo ID to get a ballot. But that fact never resonated with folks who for more than a year had heard the constant drumbeat that New Hampshire was soon to join other states that had passed such laws. 

Some major news outlets, including NBC Nightly News, lumped New Hampshire into a list of other states that would be asking for ID at the polls or otherwise implementing new voter laws. Other smaller outlets followed suit. Cities and towns within New Hampshire seemed to be confused about who was eligible to vote and with what, according to voters'-rights groups. 

Another regrettable rehash from last year’s legislative trash heap is Republicans’ so-called “right to work” bill. GOP legislative leaders have promised to re-introduce the measure this month, despite the fact that the Republican-controlled legislature failed to override Gov. Lynch’s veto just a month and a half ago. 

When New Hampshire Republicans regurgitate this “right to work” legislation, they’ll be in the company of at least fifteen other states already slated to consider these middle class-eviscerating bills this year (including Indiana, where Democrats continue to work tirelessly to defeat the so-called “right to work” measure state GOPers are attempting to ram through before the Super Bowl in Indianapolis). 

Republicans just aren’t getting the message. This kind of extreme attack on working families was soundly rejected last year in Ohio, Wisconsin, and special elections all over the country. GOP overreach clearly has consequences at the voting booth—a lesson Republicans may learn the hard way this fall.

Governing magazine’s Louis Jacobson pays special attention to state legislatures across the country, and he’s out this month with a review of a dozen legislators to watch – six from each party – just in time for the New Year.

Some of the Democratic names may be familiar to you because of the leadership they’ve already shown in 2011 and in recent years:

• Stacey Abrams - Georgia House (D)
  House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, who is the first woman to lead either party in the Georgia General Assembly, earned degrees from Spelman College, Yale Law School and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. She’s a tax attorney and a former deputy city attorney for Atlanta. Despite being in the minority in the Legislature, observers credit her with winning concessions from freshman Republican Gov. Nathan Deal on a revamp of the HOPE scholarship program, a merit-based higher education fund for Georgia residents, and for putting up a strong fight against a GOP tax plan….
  

• Reuven Carlyle - Washington House (D)
  …After a career in the cellphone and software industries, Carlyle won an open seat in 2008 representing a trendy area of Seattle. He has made a point of crossing party lines and taking on figures in his own party. “I believe the people of our district elected me in 2008 to vigorously seek intellectual and moral independence from old-fashioned orthodoxies,” he wrote on his campaign website. “We live in a 21st-century global community and stereotypical positions -- liberal, conservative, Democrat and Republican -- have little bearing on our children’s future…”
  

• Wendy Davis - Texas Senate (D)
  …Sen. Wendy Davis, who represents Fort Worth, used the limited tools available to her to achieve spectacular results. Hours before last year’s session was to end, Davis filibustered a bill that included $4 billion in school cuts. That forced Republican Gov. Rick Perry -- who was on his way to becoming a presidential candidate -- to call a special session. It also turned Davis into “an icon among Democratic activists in Texas,” says Mark P. Jones, a Rice University political scientist….
  

• Ted Lieu - California Senate (D)
  ...Before election to the Senate in 2011, Lieu chaired the Assembly’s Rules, and Banking and Finance committees, where he was a key mover of legislation on such topics as foreclosure prevention, child sex offenders, domestic violence, cyberbullying, sewage spills and health insurance.
  “Ted Lieu is that rare Democratic political figure who combines it all,” says California-based Democratic strategist Garry South. “He’s smart and well educated, articulate, pleasant and professional to deal with, center-left while also being a former JAG and current reserve officer in the Air Force, has a photogenic young family, and is part of the fastest-growing ethnic group in the largest state....
  

• Vincent Sheheen - South Carolina Senate (D)
  Sen. Vincent Sheheen exceeded all expectations in his 2010 race for governor. Running in a strongly Republican state in a strongly Republican year, he lost to Nikki Haley -- who attracted considerable national media attention -- by just four percentage points. An effective legislator, he had sponsored 18 bills that became state law prior to his gubernatorial campaign….
  

• Darrin Williams - Arkansas House (D)
  Rep. Darrin Williams was adopted and raised in Little Rock. He’s a second-termer in a state with a three-term limit for state representatives, so he’s positioned to become a strong contender for speaker -- which would make him the first African-American to hold the position. He has already chaired the House Judiciary Committee, where he won a measure of bipartisan support for legislation….
  

Please read the full column for longer profiles of each legislator. We expect big things from all six of them, in addition to the many accomplishments they've already racked up.

Many Republicans in Pennsylvania hope to add their state to the growing list of those with strict voter ID policies in place for the 2012 elections. 

Over the summer, the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania House passed HB 934, a stringent voter ID bill. Earlier this week, a Pennsylvania Senate committee finally passed the legislation out of committee. The State Government Committee amended the bill to accommodate a couple of forms of photo ID not permitted by the House version, but it still makes voting in Pennsylvania substantially more difficult for citizens who do not possess state-issued photo identification, who are often poor, minority, or elderly voters. 

Even the Republican Chair of that committee admitted that this voter ID bill addresses a nonexistent problem. 

Senate State Government Committee Chairman Charles McIlhinney said he has seen no proof that people are casting illegal ballots… "It was put upon us and asked for by the governor and by the House, who passed the bill, and they asked me to take it up," McIlhinney, R-Bucks, said after the committee vote. 

After HB 934 passed out of the State Government Committee on Monday, the bill was on track to pass the full Senate before the legislature’s final adjournment for the year. 

But instead of voting on the measure on Wednesday, December 14, the GOP-controlled state Senate punted HB 934 to another committee. 

The Pennsylvania Senate will reconvene on January 3, 2012. According to Sen. McIlhinny, “[s]ending a bill to Corbett's desk by the beginning of February would ensure the changes are in place for next year's general election.” 

Which leaves less than a month for this reprehensible legislation to pass out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, pass the full Senate, then return to the House for a full vote. 

Six states with GOP-controlled legislatures and GOP governors (Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin) passed strict voter ID laws this year, bringing the total number of states that will require a photo ID to vote in the 2012 elections to fifteen, according to NCSL. 

We’ll know by next spring whether Pennsylvania will bring that total to sixteen.

The GOP war on middle-class values rages on. 

The latest assault is actually a rehash of previous attacks on unions and working families by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and his GOP accomplices in the state legislature. When Indiana Republicans pushed for a so-called “right to work” measure earlier this year, House Democrats walked out of the legislative session. For almost five weeks, Indiana Democrats denied Republicans the quorum they needed to force that and other anti-worker measures through the chamber. Republicans ended up dropping the “right to work” proposal. 

But GOP House Speaker Brian Bosma is making this union-busting measure his top priority for Indiana’s 2012 legislative session. He’s even dipping into his campaign coffers to air a 30-second ad advocating for passage of the law. 

Unfortunately, the ad itself is misleading at best. 

In the ad, Bosma says: "Indiana is the envy of the Midwest at job creation. But economic development experts say we can and we must do more. . . . In the next session of the Indiana legislature, we will vote to make Indiana the 23rd right to work state in America. We have to remove every barrier to job creation to give Hoosiers freedom and economic opportunity." 

Other Midwestern states likely would quibble over whether Indiana is in an enviable job position. After all, while surrounding states -- none of which have adopted the legislation Bosma is seeking -- added jobs from October 2010 to October 2011, Indiana lost more jobs than any state in the nation except Georgia, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. 

One paper even charged the Republican Speaker with “playing fast and loose with the facts.” 

But far from being best in the Midwest, data released Tuesday by the U.S. Labor Department shows Indiana is not creating jobs; it's losing jobs. 

From October 2010 to October 2011, Indiana lost 12,400 jobs, a 0.4 percent decline in employment. The only state to do worse was Georgia, a right-to-work state, which lost 27,900 jobs, or 0.9 percent of employment year-to-year. 

Each of Indiana's neighboring states -- Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky -- all added jobs during that same period, including 60,500 jobs in Illinois and 48,900 jobs in Michigan. 

None of those states has a right-to-work law.

The GOP’s so-called “right to work” laws clearly are no panacea for high unemployment. Indiana Republicans should be ashamed for misleading Hoosiers with slick campaign ads instead of working to help middle-class families. 

Indiana’s statehouse Republicans just don’t seem to get the message voters delivered in Wisconsin last summer and in Ohio earlier this month: Americans want real solutions to economic woes, not right-wing policies and extreme attacks on unions. 

Republicans clearly have no interest in setting their extremism aside to promote policies that actually help those hit hardest by high unemployment and state budget cuts. Working families in Indiana -- and all across the country -- deserve better.

The GOP war on voting rages on. 

One of last Tuesday’s big Democratic wins against partisan GOP overreach was Mainers’ rebuke of the new Republican law ending same-day voter registration. With voters’ approval of Question 1, Maine citizens may again register and vote on the same day, as they had for nearly 40 years prior to the recent GOP assault on voting rights. 

Less than a week after Maine voters resoundingly rejected Republican efforts to restrict ballot box access, the state GOP is launching its next offensive: voter ID legislation. 

The Maine GOP’s newest attack on voting rights is also a rehash of a fight that played out earlier this year. The voter ID bill (LD 199) passed Maine’s Republican-controlled House but failed in the state Senate. The bill’s sponsor has announced plans to resurrect it in the 2012 legislative session and insists that the measure is necessary to curb “voter fraud” in Maine. 

Maine has reported two cases of such fraud in 38 years. 

Republican lawmakers in Maine seem to be in profound denial of the strong message sent by voters last Tuesday. 

House Speaker Rep. Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, said last week that the discussion over voter ID should be different than the bill that repealed EDR [Election Day Registration]. Nutting, the lead sponsor of the voter-defeated EDR bill, said it was too early to draw any conclusions from last week's referendum. 

Looks like we can expect Maine Republicans to continue to push their extreme, demonstrably out-of-touch agenda into the next year. 

Speaking of next year, it seems as though Ohio’s new restrictive voting law is eligible for an SB5-style “recall.” As we’ve previously noted, this law 

• Cuts the early voting period by more than half: instead of 35 days, voters will only be able to cast ballots on 12 of the 17 days prior to the election
• Eliminates early voting on Sundays
• Permits early voting on Saturdays from only 8 a.m. to noon
• Cuts early voting by mail from 35 days to 21
• Eliminates the weeklong period during which voters could register and cast ballots at the same time (“Golden Week”)
• Prohibits boards of elections from mailing absentee ballot request forms without receiving specific requests (forms are currently mailed to all registered voters)
• Prohibits boards of elections from paying return postage to encourage completion of absentee voter forms
• Eliminates local control, preventing boards of elections from extending poll hours and taking other previously permissible measures to prevent long lines and other issues seen in the 2004 elections  

(Fun walk down memory lane: Just after the bill was passed, reports surfaced that the GOP state Representative who sponsored it had been arrested for a DUI on Easter weekend in the company of a young woman who was not his wife or daughter and had tested positive for alcohol and Viagra. The legislator later resigned.) 

When voting rights supporters began the petition process to overturn the law with a referendum, the law’s provisions were suspended. Ohio Democrats seem to have collected the required number of signatures, and once they’re certified by the Secretary of State, the law will be placed on the ballot in 2012 for possible repeal. The law’s restrictive measures won't be in effect to suppress turnout for that vote… and maybe they never will.

After the 2010 Census, Florida’s rapidly-growing population earned the state two additional seats in Congress. Much of this growth is attributable to an increase in the Hispanic population. In particular, the surging Puerto Rican population in central Florida has spurred the Florida Senate to consider a proposal that would create a Hispanic-majority district in that area. 

One GOP state Senator wants to put the brakes on this plan until “Hispanic-speaking people” who vote are screened for citizenship. 

Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, rekindled the divisive debate over illegal immigration when he told the Senate committee reviewing a series of congressional redistricting plans that “before we design a district anywhere in the state of Florida for Hispanic voters, we need to ascertain that they are citizens of the United States. 

"We all know there are many Hispanic-speaking people in Florida that are not legal,’’ he said. “And I just don’t think it’s right that we try to draw a district that encompasses people that really have no business voting anyhow,” he said.

Members of Sen. Hays’ own Party were upset by his comments. 

Said Rep. Jose Diaz, R-Miami: “I think that it is unfortunate that anyone would question whether or not Hispanic voters are American citizens,’’ he said. “It is basic Government 101 that in our country only U.S. Citizens can exercise the right to vote.” 

Further, the Elections Supervisor from Sen. Hays’ own district says his concerns about illegal voting are baseless. 

But Lake County Supervisor of Elections Emogene W. Stegall said that Hays is mistaken if he believes there is a problem with illegal residents registering to vote. 

“We’ve never had a problem with illegal voting in Lake County, no way,’’ said Stegall, who has served in the county’s election’s office for 40 years. 

And as though that failed to deprive GOP Sen. Hays’ concerns of any semblance of legitimacy, consider that Puerto Ricans, whose population surge spurred the proposal to create this new district, are American citizens from birth. 

Meanwhile, Florida’s House Democratic Leader-designate Perry Thurston is standing up for voters, rather than trying searching for ways to disqualify them. 

Today Rep. Thurston wrote an open letter to Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott expressing his “profound disapproval of [his] administration’s attempts to make it harder for many Floridians to vote.” 

The Rep. Thurston’s letter reads, in part: 

Through taxpayer-funded legal shenanigans -- including Secretary of State Kurt Browning’s efforts to ignore landmark federal civil rights legislation that protects racial and language minorities in Florida -- it is clear that there is a move to suppress the vote. 

I firmly disagree with Secretary Browning’s assertion that Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act is no longer required in Florida or the United States. 

Accordingly, I am confident that the federal court is likely to block significant sections of the new “voter suppression” elections law that Republicans in the Florida Legislature passed and you signed into law earlier this year. Those unnecessary statutory changes amount to a dangerous threat to the voting rights of Florida’s language and racial minorities, and thankfully the federal courts are reviewing this misguided directive. 

I am sure the court will see how these desperate Republican attempts to keep college students, racial and language minorities, and other Democratic voters away from the polls are almost comical in their transparent partisanship.

The restrictive new voting law to which Rep. Thurston refers includes the following provisions: 

• Forces anyone updating his or her name or address on election day to fill out a provisional ballot (which often go uncounted). Since 1973, Florida voters have been able to update name or address without major issues.
• Forces any group running a registration drive to file paperwork for every volunteer and paid worker with the state.
• Reduces the number of days in the early voting period.

Florida’s Republican Secretary of State has filed a complaint seeking to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Because of VRA Section 5, the restrictive measures of Florida’s new voting legislation await federal review and approval. It seems that Florida Republicans fear their new law is too repressive to pass muster. 

We applaud Rep. Thurston for standing up for voting rights even as his GOP colleagues seek to baselessly question the eligibility of certain voting groups to cast ballots and restrict access to the franchise.

Since taking over a majority of the country’s state legislatures in January, statehouse Republicans have launched repeated and continuous assaults on voting rights. 

We’ve known for some time that at least 38 states have introduced legislation that would effectively restrict voters’ access to the ballot box. Twelve of those states have already enacted suppressive measures, and more may do so as state legislative sessions continue. 

We’ve also had an idea of the impact these laws will have on the electorate, but much of the available data up to this point has been five or more years old. 

No longer: 

Restrictive voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center [for Justice at New York University School of Law]. That's a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections. 

This study breaks down the affected voters by type of law, such as voter ID laws, anti-voter registration drive laws, and laws curtailing early voting periods and absentee voting opportunities. 

Speaking of absentee voting, Virginians may want to start practicing their penmanship if they want their absentee votes to be counted by the state’s GOP-appointed elections board. 

The Republican-controlled State Board of Elections withdrew one set of rules governing absentee ballots - they gave election officials more leeway to count the ballots of voters who made mistakes filling them out - and substituted them with less-flexible guidelines…. 

Removed from the current state absentee ballot regulation is language in the previous version that made it clear that illegible voter or witness signatures on a ballot wouldn't invalidate it, and a catch-all paragraph that specified ballots wouldn't be tossed if a voter's identity could be otherwise confirmed by election officials. 

Fun fact: In the 2008 election, 13 percent of Virginia’s voters cast absentee ballots. How many of those would have been disqualified for having “illegible” signatures? 

And thus Virginia joins the ignoble ranks of GOP-governed states taking unprecedented measures to prevent citizens from exercising their right to vote—and to have those votes counted. 

The effects of all of these voting restrictions will be staggering, particularly on the elections of the very state legislators who are working so hard to make voting so difficult. 

Consider that in 2010, more than 90 state legislative races across the country were won or lost by fewer than 100 votes. Two states where newly GOP legislative chambers passed restrictive voting measures (Ohio and Maine) had sixty-four 2010 statehouse races decided by 500 votes or fewer. Two of the Wisconsin recall elections this summer were decided by only about 2000 votes. 

Even a few thousand uncast or uncounted votes have the potential to tip majority control of a legislative chamber from one party to the other… as well as affect races all the way up the ballot. 

Republicans understand that as surely as we do. And sometimes they let the true motivations behind their suppressive voting laws slip. 

Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers flatly claimed voting was “not a right” during debate over a photo ID bill (a statement he later partially walked back). So, too, did Florida state Sen. Mike Bennett in a similar debate. Republican legislators and party leaders in Wisconsin, Maine and New Hampshire said all sorts of disparaging things about the civic qualifications of college students in the process of seeking to keep them from voting on campus. 

Statehouse Republicans across the country seem to feel that legitimate means of influencing elections are insufficient to maintain a right-wing domination of state governments. Their voter suppression tactics are a reflection of conservatives’ pathetic desperation. The GOP war on voting is simultaneously an assault on democracy and an outrageous power grab. Its effects are far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. And it’s far from over.

Sending non-work related emails from a work computer is sometimes a fireable offense, but it could soon become a jailable offense for Michigan teachers, under a bill proposed by Republican state legislators.

Under the bill, HB 4052, teachers and other state employees who send an email related to politics or union organizing could be jailed for up to a year:

Michigan educators could face a year in prison for conducting union or political business over public school e-mail servers under a bill advancing in Lansing.

State House Bill 4052 was reported out of committee last week, and would prohibit a public employee from using public e-mail for political campaigning, union activities, union recruitment, and fundraising.

Violators could be found guilty of a misdemeanor, which would carry a fine of up to $1,000, up to one year in prison or both in the bill's amended version.

This bill, sponsored by GOP Rep. Al Pscholka (who also sponsored the infamous Emergency Financial Manager law), takes the Michigan GOP’s war on teachers to a dangerous new level, criminalizing what would ordinarily be an internal disciplinary matter.

No private-sector employee ever has to worry that a union-related email to a coworker could land them both in jail. Yet HB 4052 would force Michigan teachers, firefighters, and others to live in exactly that kind of fear, all because they had the audacity to want to serve the public.

Hopefully, this odious bill will never see the light of day.

Attacks on teachers have been a recurring theme in GOP-controlled state legislatures this year. Teachers’ collective bargaining rights were part of what led to the Wisconsin recalls this summer. Indiana House Democrats boycotted Session and denied the Republicans a quorum for almost five weeks in their effort to protect teachers and public education. In Alabama, one state Representative was so disgusted by a GOP-pushed anti-teacher bill that he left the Republican Caucus and joined the Democrats. 

The latest in this long series of attacks comes from Michigan GOP state Sen. Phil Pavlov.

Sen. Pavlov, chair of the Education Committee, wants to privatize public school teaching. 

[Sen. Pavlov] is preparing legislation that would allow public school districts to hire teachers through private, for-profit companies. Privatizing the hiring process would presumably allow school districts to bypass compensation packages sought by teachers unions and let private companies compete for contracts with districts. 

Michigan Democrats have pledged to fight this outrageous proposal. 

Michigan Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, the state Senate minority leader, says she and the Democratic Caucus plan to fight Pavlov's proposal if it is included in new education legislation. She describes teacher privatization as merely a continuation of Michigan Republicans' education agenda. "Gov. [Rick] Snyder and Republicans have made no bones about it: they're trying to dismantle public education in Michigan ," Whitmer says. 

This privatization scheme isn’t even the first attack on public education in Michigan this year.  Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and the GOP-controlled legislature have already passed a state budget that cuts public school funding by nearly $500 million—or $300 per student. 

Sen. Pavlov’s privatization scheme is a brutal blow against an already-struggling education system in Michigan. 

Michigan Education Association spokesman Doug Pratt says Pavlov's plan is a "terrible idea" that would erode the quality of public school teaching because districts will look for the lowest bidder, not the best teachers. "Instead of having teachers who care about their students learning and their personal growth as their top priorities, the corporation's bottom line would be what they care about most." Pratt also claimed this is a way to kneecap teachers' unions in Michigan. "Privatization is a type of union busting," he says. 

Union busting… A theme that’s gone hand in hand with teacher attacks this year. And Sen. Pavlov must be salivating over both every time a school bell rings. 

(h/t Mother Jones)