When she's trying to preserve her credibility as anything but a mouthpiece of Republican governors like John Kasich and billionaires like the Walmart heirs and Rupert Murdoch, Michelle Rhee claims she supports collective bargaining rights. She claimed it while her StudentsFirst organization collaborated on Michigan bills limiting collective bargaining for teachers and lowering the standard for demoting teachers from requiring "reasonable and just cause" to allowing anything that's not "arbitrary and capricious." She claimed it while StudentsFirst spent $70,000 defending a state representative who championed those bills from recall, even though he was also a horrendous gay-baiter . Now, StudentsFirst's PAC has contributed $500,000 to oppose the Michigan ballot measure that would put collective bargaining rights in the state's constitution.

That's an awfully big financial investment in opposing something you claim to support. It's a financial investment Rhee and StudentsFirst wouldn't be in a position to make without the support of people like the Waltons and Murdoch. And, by the way, it's the sort of position StudentsFirst uses Change.org—which recently announced it would be taking money not just from organizations that, like StudentsFirst, claim to be nonpartisan or bipartisan or whatever BS it is this week, but from corporations and avowedly right-wing groups as well—to campaign for.

Eclectablog has written extensively about the importance of Michigan's Proposal 2 and the dirty campaign against it.

(Continue reading below the fold.)