Your agenda has always been clear, Gov. Snyder, though never so nakedly as yesterday.
You rode into our state and started right off the bat by robbing from senior citizens' pensions to give tax breaks to your CEO buddies. And you gutted education to put even more money in their pockets. Then you pushed through a law (now repealed by voter referendum) that allowed you to usurp the powers of elected officials in financially troubled communities. And when that was overturned, you kept your "emergency managers" in place and just tweaked the law a little bit so the referendum wouldn't apply.
In the last couple of days, you've offered a lot of bullshit reasons for ramming through the most anti-worker package of bills, yet, in a lame-duck session, so quickly that there was no chance to organize opposition. Perhaps the shittiest of the bullshit nuggets was "I had to do it because the unions overreached with Proposition 2."
Really, Gov. Snyder? Really? You think taking revenge on the people you're responsible to, for exercising their Constitutional right to petition their government, is a good way to run a government? Really?
You said that Proposition 2, which would have enshrined the right to collective bargaining in the state constitution, was overreach.
Was it? Or maybe you just proved exactly why we needed Proposition 2.
Lets talk business, Gov. Snyder. You're supposedly an expert on how to run a business, right?
So, tell me, Governor, did you, at any time during your business career, hire people because you had extra money lying around because of tax breaks? No? What, you mean to tell me that instead of hiring extra workers who aren't needed because of low demand, you actually pocketed that money or sent it back to the shareholders? Oh, right, that's how business works, isn't it.
So, when you got into power in Michigan, why is it you worked to give corporations every tax break possible, while you picked the pockets of retired workers and took money away from education.
The education cuts are particularly troubling. I suppose you think the pensioners don't matter that much -- they're just going to die anyway, aren't they? But education, that's the future. Businesses like to locate in areas that have a strong education infrastructure, did you know that? The next generation of well-educated workers is the next generation of business profits.
But your "plan" is to turn as much of the state education budget as possible over to entrepreneurs to run for-profit charter schools. Great plan, Governor. Only a small percentage of charter schools perform as well as the average public school. Yet, you want to turn our tax money over to these fly-by-night operators and let them skim off their profits before they begin to provide services.
The entire substance of your plan for the state seems to operate on the level of the South Park underwear gnomes:
1. Turn as much taxpayer money as possible over to entrepreneurs, impoverishing retirees and gutting education.
2. Destroy any vestiges of power left to the middle class, so there won't be any skilled workers available for businesses in the future.
3. PROFIT!
You want to talk overreach, Gov. Snyder? How about ramming through anti-worker legislation during a lame duck session, when you know enough opposition is coming into the Legislature with the new session to make these laws impossible to pass.
You couldn't even get all the Republicans to vote for these turds. You only succeeded because of a gerrymandered super majority.
What do you think is going to happen now? We're all going to crawl off and lick our wounds? We'll quietly go back to work as substandard wages and watch our families slowly starve? Do you REALLY think that's how this plays out?
Are you friggin' kidding me?
I know that in your belly, you have this warm feeling that when things are good for CEOs, that's the definition of things are good.
That's not Michigan, Gov. Snyder. We're union people. We stand together and we stand strong.
You remember that. It'll be on the test.