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.
...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."
This Fox interview of Kyle Olson by Gretchen Carlson is really showing the anti-union agenda of the education reform movement.
Olson is attacking the use of a book called Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type...a delightful book about how some cows typed out a demand for electric blankets. The cows said they would give no milk that day, that it was getting cold in the barn. Here is a video of the book, and I will post it separately as well. They got their blankets, but then the ducks took up demands.
I was stunned at Gretchen Carlson. I never watch Fox, so I was surprised at how she sounds. Unbelievable.
Olson's group, EAG...Education Action Group..is truly a false front group. Here is more about it.
EAG isn’t really a group. It’s two very partisan men with ties to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Dick DeVos of Amway Corp. fame. Olson’s brother is director of education policy at the Mackinac Center, another anti-union, pro-privatization group. The man who incorporated EAG, Eric Doster, is a Michigan Republican Party lawyer who has served on the board of the Great Lakes Education Project, a political action committee linked to DeVos. DeVos, of course, helped finance the failed 2000 vouchers initiative.
EAG bashes the collective bargaining process and school employees’ rights to inform the community and to work to elect leaders who value students and the employees who teach and help them at school.
“I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party. I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.” – Betsy DeVos (Roll Call, 1997)
