Ben Velderman. My stalker and dark money.

My stalker Ben Velderman in 2010 and more recently.

Some of my older readers may recall Ben Velderman. Back when I was president of the union local, the Park Ridge Education Association, Ben filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all of my work emails and my personnel file.

As a public employee, he was entitled to receive them after they had been redacted of information that made reference to kids or named third parties.

Ben got a lot of art supply order forms, faculty meeting agendas and copies of my excellent evaluations.

Ben wasn’t filing a FOIA request on his own. He works for a Michigan-based anti-union grouplet called the Education Action Group. It’s an ironic name considering they are against public education, do action that mainly consists of harassing union activists and are a group that is so small they could hold their annual convention in a toilet stall.

AEG’s leader is Kyle Olson. Olson’s fame centers on his campaign to remove the picture book, Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type, from kindergarten classrooms on the basis that it mentions the word negotiation. Olson claimed the book was pro-union indoctrination.

Which it is, by the way. Great book. Buy it for your kids this holiday season.

Although Olson promised to “make me his personal project,” I haven’t heard from him in a while.

Until yesterday.

AEG is really a creation of a right-wing stink tank called the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It in turn is funded with Koch brothers and De Vos family money. That is hard to prove because it is funded with dark money – money that is bundled and hidden from public scrutiny by recent Supreme Court decisions.

So it was with interest that I read yesterday’s Sun-Times editorial about the Mackinac Center and dark money.

It now appears that the latest project of the Mackinac Center is defending the tobacco industry.

Let’s see: Anti-public schools. Anti-union. Pro-tobacco industry.

The Mackinac Center wanted the Sun-Times to publish an op-ed piece they wrote opposing Illinois plans to raise taxes on smokes.

Amazingly the Sun-Times wrote an editorial explaining why they wouldn’t print it.

It was a nicely written op-ed and made good points, but we had one big problem with it: We were unfamiliar with the Mackinac Center and, when we asked, they would not say who pays their bills. How could we possibly publish their op-ed railing cigarette taxes when, for all we knew, they secretly were paid by the tobacco industry?

The Sun-Times went on:

As a result of recent Supreme Court decisions that free up spending on elections, record sums are being spent by nonprofit groups to influence the public’s views on policy issues of the day, such as taxation and term limits, and on the candidates themselves. Much of that money is spent directly, used to produce op-eds, social media messaging and TV and radio ads; much more is filtered through political action committees on steroids — SuperPACs — to benefit specific candidates.

Such nonprofits — called “dark money” groups because they do not reveal their donors — spent more than $256 million in the 2012 federal elections, according to ProPublica, the investigative journalism outfit. In Illinois, about $800,000 in dark money was spent on state legislative races in 2012, according to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

The Sun-Times concludes:

In general, though, when a group that cannot claim long and familiar roots does not reveal its funders, we hold it to a more skeptical standard, and we urge you to do the same.

“It’s not exactly a partisan issue, but it’s a wealthy person issue,” David Morrison, deputy director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, told us. “Who has the resources to put their money into something like this? They say they want to protect their members, but the reality is they may have a very small number of members. They’re trying to create the impression of a movement.”

Let’s start our own movement: Reveal your sugar daddies or move along.

Yes indeed.

Who paid Ben Velderman to file a FOIA request for my emails and personnel file? I’ll never know.

And by the way. The Illinois Policy Institute – the group that is leading the charge on public employee pensions?

Funded with dark money.

NEA members at RA are not for the kids?

Unions, as evidenced by these videos, have been putting the interests of school employees first for quite some time. The reason the obvious dichotomy has developed is because the adult issues (pay, benefits, work rules) are often divergent from student needs. – Kyle Olson, Education Action Group

Last week my stalker Ben Velderman reappeared to announce the death of the NEA.

This week we have the return of Ben’s boss, Kyle Olson of the Education Action Group.

Olson, you recall, traveled the country last year warning the citizens that the children’s book Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type was Bolshevik introctrination.

I have a close personal relationship with Kyle since he wrote a letter to my district’s school board president demanding that I be fired for mocking the weird Ben Velderman on my blog.

The school board president suggested in response that Kyle was wasting tax-payer money on these anti-Klonsky crusades and should leave the district alone.

So. What is Kyle Olson up to lately?

He is condemning teachers, including me, for suggesting that we be paid fairly, have good working conditions and have their promised pensions paid.

These were all video taped at last weeks NEA Representative Assembly.

To Kyle this is clearly evidence that teachers are selfish and ARE NOT FOR THE KIDS!

Examples?

In this ongoing project called Use Your Teacher Voice, teachers speak for about 30 seconds about their work.

Michelle Harris-Padron, a teacher in Oxnard, California describes how she advocates for bicycle helmets for her kindergarten students and encourages teacher voices to be heard.

Brent Gaspaire of Tacoma, Washington is video taped saying,”You can’t put students first if you put teachers last.”

And then Olson posts my video saying that the state should pay the pension they promised me.

To Olson this is clear evidence I’m not for the kids.

There are many more videos.

They’re great and you should watch them.

Or make one.

Take added pleasure in knowing how much it aggravates Kyle Olson.

Glenn Beck and Kyle Olson sit around discussing the evils of “Click Clack Moo. Cows that Type.”

It gets better.

Exclusive video of “Click Clack Moo. Cows that Type.” Kyle Olson is outraged. No wonder. The cows go on strike.

EAG’s Kyle Olson exposes kindergarten teacher’s use of “Click Clack Moo. Cows that Type,” to indoctrinate students.

Back a few years, religious con-man Pat Robertson accused Sponge Bob Square Pants of being Gay.

Of course, who knows? Maybe Bob is Gay. I don’t care.

The latest right-wing loony accusation is delivered by Kyle Olson of the Michigan-based grouplet, the Education Action Group.

Olson parades around as a concerned parent of a kindergartener. But we have pointed out that the EAG is secretly funded, has close ties to the Koch brothers, Andrew Breitbart and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The Mackinac Center has recently been exposed for secretly sending emails and lobbying Michigan legislators in violation of their non-partisan tax status.

Kyle also recently filed a Freedom of Information request for my personnel file. Exciting reading.

This week, Kyle went on Fox (surprise) to denounce the use of Click Clack Moo. Cows that Type to indoctrinate kindergarten students in pro-union ideology. He accused a Chicago teacher of sneaking the word, “negotiate,” into a vocabulary lesson.

Kyle. Check this out: I read a picture book about a young Mexican boy called Diego to my first grade art students. It’s about Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist. Hey man. He grew up to be a Communist!

Kyle Olson demands transparency for everyone but him.

One of Kyle Olson’s Education Action Group cult members wrote me anonymously accusing me of being afraid of transparency.

But the secrecy surrounding EAG gives lack of transparency new meaning.

From the Michigan Education Associations EAG Toolkit:

• The EAG website is located on servers owned by “Domains by Proxy” a division of Godaddy.com that allows people to anonymously sponsor websites. As a result, anyone who investigates the EAG website will find that the “owner” is located in Scottsdale, Arizona, where DBP is located. Website owners pay a premium to have DBP host their sites.
• Olson refuses to disclose the EAG’s funding sources or the names of its board members, other than Muskegon activist Jane Missimer, 69. While the site says it is “a group of citizens and school board leaders” it is widely assumed that it is funded by the Mackinac Center in Midland. In fact the EAG Articles of Incorporation state:  “The corporation is to be financed under the following general plan: contributions from corporate foundations and private foundations.”
• “Unfortunately we don’t know much about Olson’s other anti-union, anti-public school conspirators – while he has no compunction about decrying union PAC dollars going to political candidates, he refuses to disclose who is funding his operations.”