Southwestern Michigan-- Caught Up In The Upton Whirlpool Money Sucking Machine

John Waltz is one of the most outstanding candidates for Congress running anywhere. He's a blue-collar New Deal Democrat who has one overarching political goal: to represent the regular working families in this country who are ignored or even disdained by the fat-cat political insiders-- from Mitt Romney to the Establishment Inside the Beltway Democrats who have sold their souls to K Street.

As Montana state Rep. Franke Wilmer said in response to Mitt Romney's assertion that only the independently wealthy should run for office:

We have a representative democracy, but who does it represent? I think it is time we have representatives that represent the middle class, real people who live real lives... It's hard to think of anything more undemocratic than suggesting that personal wealth is a qualifier to run for public office. This is just one more example of how out of touch so many of our political leaders are. So many members of Congress have no idea what it is like to pay a mortgage, or not to be able afford health care, or having to sacrifice just to be able to put your child through college.

She could well have had Waltz's opponent, Fred Upton, poster boy for the plutocracy, in mind. We've tried to explain Upton's treacherous dual role: hereditary self-styled aristocrat of western Michigan and representative in Congress of the interests of the one percent. Prominent Michigan blogger Chris Savage did a much better job of it this week with Whirlpool Corp-- A Michigan Job Creation "Success Story": Dodging Taxes & Profitiing From Poverty. Starting with the story of what Whirlpool and Upton's family did to Benton Harbor, it's almost a treatise on why it is so crucial to replace Fred Upton with John Waltz.

Whirlpool’s exploitation of the situation in Benton Harbor likely goes back more than a decade, but we can start with the turn of the millennium. A former official with the Southwest Michigan (SWM) Airport board recently told me that Whirlpool benefited significantly from a connection with U.S. Congressman Fred Upton:

I am a former elected and appointed official from Stevensville who was on the SWM airport board. While I appreciate that you expanded the facts for Rachel Maddow’s show, there is much more. During the time I was serving, I had a considerable number of flights in and out of that airport. It is not well known that Northwest airlines received a ticket subsidy for every seat in and out of the airport. That lasted for two years, which is just the time the airport serviced the public commercially. It was required to service commercially in order to receive federal funding for the airport’s runway extensions and electronic navigation aid updates. Of course, this coincided with Whirlpool’s purchase of a new jet which required a longer runway and new navigation electronics. The person who supported the bill to subsidize the tickets? Fred Upton.

You mention the upgrade of local property values, and do not mention the Upton’s property in close proximity (2 blocks).

While nothing is illegal about these things, I just felt that the focus has been on benefiting Whirlpool and Whirlpool’s heirs, and not the general population. I [have connections] with the Uptons in northern Virginia, so this is not a personal attack, just an observation. For so long in Congress, I am really surprised at the fiscal conservatism applied to the constituents and not the person or the corporate beneficiary.

Indeed, in addition to the ticket subsidies, the SWM Airport received an earmark for fiscal year 2011 as part of a nearly $1 billion allocation in discretionary grants, which coincides with the expansion of the runway.

Whirlpool is also an integral part of a development group in Benton Harbor known as the Cornerstone Alliance. In fact, many would argue that Cornerstone Alliance is Whirlpool. Non-profit, investigative reporting site TruthOut.org reported in May 2011: “To keep a clean public image, Whirlpool funds and largely controls a nonprofit in Benton Harbor called the Cornerstone Alliance, which has a revolving door with Whirlpool and the Whirlpool Foundation for its staff members and employees. Cornerstone has long served the interests of Whirlpool in Benton Harbor, creating a façade through which the company can pass off its actions as being in the interests of ‘the community.’”

Cornerstone Alliance has been aggressively developing whatever property it can procure in Benton Harbor. The company is the developer of the Harbor Shores luxury golf community that has received a great deal of attention, in part because developers convinced city officials to lease part of Jean Klock Park to them.

Jean Klock Park was deeded to the city in perpetuity but with the help of a city attorney who later went to work for Cornerstone, they secured a decades-long lease for three holes of their Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course. In the process, acres of shoreline dunes were deforested for a golf course where the annual fee exceeds the average annual income of Benton Harbor residents. An interactive panoramic of the area affected can be seen HERE. Before and after pictures can be seen HERE (courtesy of Protect Jean Klock Park.)

In exchange for this precious piece of public land (which is the primary reason Harbor Shores can be called “Shores”) the city exchanged land later found to be highly contaminated with industrial waste.

...Whether or not Jonathan Mahler is right about Whirlpool being the salvation of Benton Harbor remains to be seen. What is clear is that, if they are, it will be because they have very deliberately used the city’s desperate situation, in part caused by Whirlpool’s outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to other countries, to direct taxpayer monies into their own bank accounts. If Whirlpool saves Benton Harbor, it will likely because they were able to steal Benton Harbor from the largely black, poor residents who live there-- a scam underwritten, in part, by taxpayers.

Maybe they’ll rename the town Upton Harbor.

There isn't a more despicable Member of Congress than Fred Upton. That's part of the reason the L.A. Times just named him Congress' biggest enemy of the Earth. Western Michigan needs to come to grips with the fact that they've been fooled for years and years and years and have been sending a toxic representative to Washington to help plot their downfall and enslavement. They're lucky to have someone like John Waltz to turn to today. The district has been turning away from the Republicans in recent years, and after giving Bush solid wins in 2000 and 2004, the residents there turned out in record numbers to give Obama a 54-45% win over McCain.

The next step is for them to rid themselves of Upton. It won't be easy, and of course the DCCC refuses to lift a hand against him. The DCCC doesn't have anything against Waltz, but DCCC Chair Steve Israel founded something called the Congressional Third Aisle Caucus, a conservative bipartisan operation that pledges to never engage in political campaigns against fellow members... like Upton. What the hell was Pelosi thinking when she assigned Israel the DCCC chair? Anyway, if you'd like to help Waltz oust Upton-- and he will need all the help he can get-- you can do it here. Here's part of a letter he sent to residents of the Kalamazoo area district:

It's all but certain that Fred will have a Tea-Party backed primary challenge.

Jack Hoogendyk has said that he will hold a press conference next week to reveal his plans. It seems likely that he will run considering he will have the backing of Freedom Works and other Koch Brother funded Tea Party organizations. The Club for Growth is already airing ads in district calling out Fred for his “liberal” beliefs.

Pundits and right-wing groups would like for us to believe that this primary is about ideological beliefs, but I challenge anyone to find any position, social or otherwise, that Fred and Jack differ on. The only one, the one that is causing Fred to be primaried, is natural gas.

Fred is Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. He is a proponent of natural gas and aims to pass the Natural Gas Act, which will provide billions of dollars in subsidies to transition our nation's transportation fleet to natural gas. Lobbyists from Chesapeake Energy, a company that Fred owns millions of dollars of stock in, authored the proposed legislation.

Fred's energy policy is to trade one monopoly for another-- one that will benefit him personally and create a bubble by driving up the price for natural gas then crashing once they come clean about the supplies. Sound familiar? The one thing we should have learned from the last economic crash is that we cannot build our future on speculative bubbles.

Like everything else Fred does, this bill is completely driven by special interests and we might even be able to overlook that if it meant breaking our dependence on foreign oil with a safe and plentiful alternative. This does no such thing-- the supplies are being exaggerated and safety issues are well documented.

The problem is that Big Oil gets cut out of the loop. They are digging in and putting their money where their mouths are by backing candidates across the country with front groups like Freedom Works and the Club for Growth to beat incumbents that would vote to eliminate their monopoly. In this case, they are backing Jack Hoogendyk.

Now I'm no fan of Big Oil and once I make it to congress I will vote to use a responsible balance of renewables and fossil fuels. This will make us more efficient, environmentally responsible, and safer by not having to rely so heavily on foreign suppliers.