Noam Scheiber of the New York Times has dug deep into the political activities of Betsy DeVos and her family and produced a comprehensive analysis of the way they have used their vast wealth to impose their radical agenda on the state of Michigan.

 

Not it only have they led the campaignn for privatization of public education, but they have successfully fought labor unions, income taxes, estate taxes, and any effort to curb their self-interest. They even have spent money to defeat moderate Republicans. They seem to have a hammer lock on the Republican legislature in Michigan. Scheiber compares them to the Koch brothers in their use of their wealth to achieve their radical political goals. They want to restore the America of a century ago, before the New Deal.

 

“They have this moralized sense of the free market that leads to this total program to turn back the ideas of the New Deal, the welfare state,” Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian who has written extensively about the conservative movement, said, describing the DeVoses.”