Silver Bullet LLC Petition Mercenaries Lie in Michigan, Too

Last updated on 2015-10-26

I’ve reported previously, and have heard from multiple sources, that Silver Bullet LLC, a Las Vegas petition-circulator company, is carrying the fake 18%-rate-cap petition and the Marsy’s Law petition around South Dakota. I have also heard from honest South Dakota circulators that Silver Bullet LLC is behind the “blockers” who harass circulators of the real 36%-rate-cap petition to scare off potential signers.

Silver Bullet LLC’s money-grubbing chicanery isn’t unique to South Dakota. Just as Silver Bullet LLC is helping exploitative payday lenders sabotage our initiative process with a fake rate cap, Silver Bullet LLC is helping exploiters of labor in Michigan by circulating a ballot initiative to repeal Michigan’s prevailing wage law, which protects local construction workers (and the local economy) from being undercut by out-of-state contractors.

Here’s a sampling from the Michigan blogosphere of shady circulator behavior witnessed by Michigan residents over the past few months:

Linette, upon arriving home after a trip to Heritage Fest with the kids this past weekend, mentioned to me that a man had approached her, asking her to sign a petition. The petition, he told her, would put legislation on the ballot that would somehow help rebuild Michigan’s roads. As she didn’t have time to read it, she didn’t sign, but she mentioned it to me, knowing that I’d be interested, and I began asking around. And here’s what I discovered. The petition in question had nothing to do with our roads, and everything to do with repealing Michigan’s prevailing wage law, which dictates that individuals hired to work on government-funded construction projects within the state be paid union-scale wages and given similar benefits [Mark Maynard, “Republicans Bend Truth in Petition Drive to Repeal Michigan’s Popular Prevailing Wage Law,” MarkMaynard.com, 2015.08.25]

Maynard cites another Michigan eyewitness who caught the Silver Bullet mercenaries calling his Michigan neighbors “a bunch of dumb-asses” and managed to drive them off simply by hanging around and “telling potential petition-signers that the solicitors were being paid, were from out of state, and were outright lying to people about their petition.”

Elsewhere in Michigan…

Yesterday, Barb Shelton, the former Chair of the Jackson County Democratic Party contacted me about something she had witnessed. “I had two people knocking doors in my low-income, high-minority population neighborhood in Jackson,” she said. “They were passing the petitions off as ‘being for safer schools’. They also told my neighbor she could ‘qualify to win a cell phone’. I asked for their boss…of course they left” [Chris Savage, “Petitioners for Corporate Front Group Effort to Repeal Michigan’s Prevailing Wage Law Lying to Get Signatures,” Eclectablog, 2015.08.15].

But we know these out-of-state aren’t interested in informing or respecting voters; they just want to make their quick buck and get out of town, with no thought for the consequences of the measures they petition on the communities they invade.

And in Detroit:

Bruce Sage, an attorney from Metro Detroit, told MLive he was approached this June by a man in a Meijer parking lot who asked him to sign a petition for a proposal to “ensure transparency in government.”

That sounded good to Sage, who said he started to sign his name before stopping to take a closer look at the physical petition.

“It was about the prevailing wage, and I said wait a minute, this isn’t about transparency in government,” Sage recounted. “Why would you say that? And this is what he said: ‘They told me to'” [Jonathan Oosting, “Michigan Prevailing Wage Supporters Allege Misleading Sales Pitches in Petition Drive,” MLive.com, 2015.09.05].

And more…

On the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council’s Facebook page, there continues to be a lively debate about the benefits of prevailing wage, and short descriptions of encounters with petition gathers.

“I was told it was ‘repealing a law that hurts small businesses.’ That language right there made me suspicious – read more, declined to sign,” said one Facebook poster.

Wrote another: “I was approached at the Sec. of State office, by a young woman who said this was a petition for more well paid jobs in Michigan. I asked who she was soliciting for… And she said she was an independent contractor. I read the language and it was easy to decline to sign! Again, the right wing is paying poor people to work against their own self interest, and prepping them with dishonest scripts” [Marty Mulcahy, “Petition Effort for Prevailing Wage Repeal Backed by $1 Million—So Far,” Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council, 2015.06.24].

The Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council puts Silver Bullet’s lies into this sharp video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xH7zNlis-E

Given Silver Bullet LLC’s willingness to use lies to win their payoffs, and given the sacred nature of the petition and the ballot, perhaps we should add one more proposal to our brainstorm list of petition reforms: deem anyone actively circulating a petition to be under oath, and deem any lie spoken while circulating to be perjury. Or, rather than ending up stuck with prisons full of Silver Bullet staff, perhaps we fight market forces with market forces: invalidate all signatures gathered by any petitioner who is proven to have lied while circulating, and offer citizens bounties for such proof.

Silver Bullet’s shady circulation tactics in Michigan and South Dakota this year (not to mention the tricks they appear to have pulled in Missouri in 2012 on behalf of payday lenders) should make clear that neither they, nor the petitions they circulate, nor the ballot question committees who hire them should be trusted.