While outraged Americans were transfixed on the happenings in Wisconsin, where a Republican governor was busy inventing reasons to silence the public employees of his state, another governor was floating along, doing the very same thing in his state, with little media attention.
Rick Snyder, Republican governor in Michigan got his union busting bill approved by his fellow Republican in the state’s senate and the state’s assembly, and any day now, Mr. Snyder is expected to sign the bill into law.
And this bill will give “over reaching” a whole new meaning. It will have the power to determine whether any district in Michigan is failing, terminate the positions of the elected officials of that particular district, and allows Snyder to assign anyone he sees fit to run that district. So the voters are left cut out of the process when it comes to who’ll run their district.
These new appointed officials will have the authority from Mr. Snyder to void any contracts the districts or municipalities may have entered into. Included, will be contracts with unions and their collective bargaining and school programs.
The bill also creates additional taxes for the middle class and the poorer sections of Michigan. The revenues gained from this new tax, figures quoted at $1.8 billion, will be given to the rich in the form of a tax cut.
Michigan’s AFL-CIO president, Mark Gaffney tells Politico;
“Michigan politicians have capitalized on our state’s budgetary woes in order to ram through legislation that rather than create jobs, takes away even more rights and resources from Michiganders and instead gives an unprecedented amount of power into those connected to the governor. As hundreds of thousands have chanted in Wisconsin, ‘This is not what democracy looks like.”
