Michigan Republican Hypocrisy
Michigan Republicans are very special. After passing right to work legislation in at best a marginally legal manner, they are seeking to punish universities who are negotiating new contracts with faculty that would delay the legislation until the end of the contract. Specifically, they are seeking to reduce appropriations to the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, that great bastion of unionism, by 15% as a punitive action for not kowtowing to their extremist anti-labor agenda.
Republicans: still petty bullies
Their Mississippi economic policies will pay off any day now.
If you’re a member of the 1%, they’ve been paying off for thirty years.
+1%
Michissippi
Michoacan
Too cold for large scale marijuana production.
Governor Snyder, he of the no-I-won’t-oh-nevermind-yes-I-will position on the right-to-work bill, is just as non-committal on this (http://michiganradio.org/post/gov-snyder-weighs-legislation-aimed-punishing-universities):
“It’s early in the legislative process,” Snyder said Tuesday evening when asked about a proposed higher education budget bill that could cost his alma mater, the University of Michigan, millions in state funding next fiscal year.
“What I would say is, if people are coming in and bargaining in good faith and showing real benefits, I don’t believe people should be penalized. Now, the real issue would be if somebody were doing that with no substance to simply extend the date, then I could see legislators having a concern. So it’s just something to watch in the legislative process.”
It would be very bad if we don’t get rid of this putz next year.
I’ve said since he was elected that Snyder was the worst of the Great Lakes GOP troika (Kasich, Snyder, and Walker) because he is the best at appearing moderate while enacting policies just as right-wing as his neighbors. I have to think he watched Ohio and Wisconsin carefully and learned from what happened in those states, especially with respect to labor.
I’ll slightly disagree. I don’t think Snyder had any interest in passing RtW. But he’s worse than Kasich and Walker [and don't forget Malevolent Mitch] because he’s unwilling to stop Dick DeVos from implementing his agenda.
I said it when they passed RtW, that Snyder signed his political death warrant. No longer will he be seen as a moderate, but he gained absolutely nothing by mollifying DeVos and the crazies, who will never see Snyder as one of them, regardless of how often he fluffs them. Latest piece of evidence: Snyder’s biggest priority is transportation funding. House transportation bill was introduced this week. It included almost none of Snyder’s key initiatives.
Snyder didn’t learn the same lesson Granholm didn’t learn: the MI GOP was a trend-setter in GOP intransigence, and the only way to work “with them” is that at your first opportunity you kick them in the teeth and make them choke on the shards. Only then will they respect you, only then will they somewhat fear you, and if they don’t fear you, they’ll shit down your throat 365 days a year.
“I don’t think Snyder had any interest in passing RtW. But he’s worse than Kasich and Walker [and don't forget Malevolent Mitch] because he’s unwilling to stop Dick DeVos from implementing his agenda.”
It would’ve been fun to be a fly on the wall for that conversation:
Dick DeVos: Sign that right to work law.
Rick Michigan: Do I have to?
Dick DeVos: Yes.
Rick Michigan: Okay.
In other news, not only the universities, but the county also implemented a new, long term union deal before the deadline:
http://annarborchronicle.com/2013/03/20/new-washtenaw-county-labor-deals-approved/
It’s nice that the county is so strongly opposed to the legislation that they did this, and at first it doesn’t look like a bad deal for anyone, and then you get to this:
“Current employees will remain in the county’s defined benefit retirement plan, unless they choose to transfer into a defined contribution plan.
Employees hired after Jan. 1, 2014 will participate in a defined contribution retirement plan”
And this:
“Workers hired after Jan. 1, 2014 will have negotiated health care benefits. Their retirement health care will be handled through retiree health reimbursement accounts (RHRAs), with staggered contributions by the county based on years of employment.”
Jebus. Even in places where Snyder is less popular than Toyota and Ohio State combined the unions are losing ground rapidly. That thing could get repealed first thing in 2015 it’ll still have done a hell of a lot of damage.
It’s not that complicated: General consensus is DeVos made it clear he’d fund a primary challenge to Snyder if Snyder didn’t get in line. Dumb shit Snyder was too craven to even realize that in thinking he ensured himself a clear primary that he may have made himself unelectable, and may end up with a primary challenge anyway.
You’re right in that Snyder wasn’t exactly gung-ho for RtW, at least not openly. At the same time, I thought his “it’s not on my agenda” was more than a little suspicious. Why couldn’t he just come out and say he was against RtW? The way he phrased his opposition (if it can be called that) sounded like a way for him to leave open the possibility of enacting RtW while being able to deny that he lied about being opposed to it.
I hope so, but memories are short, and a lot can happen between now and 2014. Voters might be willing to accept the new normal.
He didn’t want to speak against the winger orthodoxy.
It’s important to remember that this is the first elective office Snyder has ever held, and that he only got through the GOP primary because he had tons more money than the rest of the field combined, and they split up the fundie/teabagger majority and Snyder got all the votes of the non-insane minority of the GOP primary electorate. He’s an accidental governor who’s never been trusted by his own party.
Point taken – looks like the Michigan Senate has also rejected Snyder’s health insurance exchange plan. It does make him look like a dupe.
Yup. He has zero influence within the party or over the legislature. Total amateur. Shows how money can overcome almost everything else in an election, in his case the primary. And for the general, well, it was 2010 and he was a Repub running against a weak Dem candidate
A Republican Governor who can learn from the mistakes of others? Rare, and definitely dangerous.
I’ve mentioned here before that I was born and raised a Michigander; I have to say that stuff like this makes me glad that I can call myself a Washingtonian (though it’s not all rosy here, either), and said at what’s happening to my ancestral state.
The Michigan GOP really started taking a nasty turn beginning in the 1980s with the ascendancy of the Reformed Church wingnuts from the west side of the state coupled with the right-wing policy factory known as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (which I will not link to, but you can find them easily enough). What we’re seeing (among other things) is the result of that combination taking advantage of the political space given it by the economic problems in Michigan. It’s disgusting.
the ascendancy of the Reformed Church wingnuts from the west side of the state
Most notably the DeVos/Prince extended family, the folks who brought you Amway, Blackwater, and Focus on the Family
Yep. They’re loaded, and I have zero doubt they’re pulling a lot of the strings in state legislature and the governor’s mansion.
In fact, I’m getting an ad from them right now on this site pushing their horse-shit ad campaign pushing “Right-to-Work: Making Michigan Home Again. More and Better Jobs”
“Republicans: Fixing the economy by making you all dirt poor, but we’re totally going to fix it soon!”
Michigan is really just a micro case of what the GOP’s plan is for the whole country. Only reason they stay afloat probably is people who live in States where they can actually make money go there on vacation.
And don’t even get me started about their parade of frivolous lawsuits the Mackinac goons are preparing to file to overturn all these contract extensions. They’ve already gone after the teachers in Taylor, a Detroit suburb. (That’s the other ad they have up from time to time — at least the revenue goes to buy Loomis some decent whiskey.
In case you haven’t been able to tell, my hatred for these guys is personal — I’m a (soon to graduate) PhD. student at UM and spent way too much time battling Mackinac’s PR arm over a Research Assistant Organizing Campaign at UM in 2010-2012. After they had several bullshit complaints dismissed, they simply went crying to the Sen. Majority leaders’ office. Within two weeks a bill had been signed making it illegal for RAs to form a union, because, you know “FREEDOM!”
Oh, I’m with you on that. The Mackinac Center is a blight upon the state. There’s a reason I wouldn’t even link to them.
The proposed bill works something like this: the penalties kick in unless it can be shown that the contracts resulted in more than 10% savings.
Now, consider what this formula shows abut the motives behind the so-called “right-to-work” law.
Was it really about defending the rights of workers who did not want to join the union?
On the contrary, it’s quite plain from the proposed penalty bill that what the Legislature expected the bill to accomplish, fr starters, was an immediate cut in wages/benefits by at least 10%.
+1
Well, that’s another state I’m marking off my list of potential places to work. :/
Soon it will be all 50. But there won’t be any jobs to have anyway so it will all work out.
I don’t think you’ll be seeing “right-to-work” passing in California any time soon. We defeated a ballot measure for it last year, and the Dems have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature.
You defeated something different, which would have prevented auto-deduction of political contributions (we had that lovely piece of legislation forced on us back in the 1990s). Having said that, I’m not too concerned about RTW in blue states — but I am concerned about a national RTW law, which is on the wish lists of many GOP candidates.
I may be over-optimistic, but I don’t think a national RTW law could get past the Senate, not with the filibuster being used so much.
It’s too bad, because Michigan really is a nice place, IMHO.
Not in the Winter, which this year will probably include most of April.
I lived through a lot of those winters. They can be hard, but nowhere’s perfect.
you haven’t live in San Diego, have you?
No, but I’ve been there, and yes, it’s a lovely place. A bit dry for me, though.
At least, in Michigan, we usually don’t have to worry about hurricanes, volcanos, or sinking into the ocean.
Lack of killer sinkholes, too. Though if you move to parts of the U.P. you do have to careful of old mine shafts.
Oh, we have sinkholes, although most are in the UP or the northern lower penninsula (or in the lakes themselves), and not in the most populous areas
You just wear a coat!
/former Yooper
The trees are the correct height, I hear tell.
Because they cut them all down.
As a Michigander I agree.
I ran the 2004 campaign against Michigan’s ban on same sex marriages. The assholes pushing that went for more expansive language than they did in most other states, and worded it in a way that I immediately saw was intended to ban domestic partner benefits. We made that a centerpiece of the campaign, and despite the idiots at HRC–god they suck at electoral politics–and that other far more useless LGBT group I’ve not heard of if years–NGLTF?–who said there was no way we could defeat it, and gave us almost zero money, we got almost exactly the same result at they got in Oregon, despite the national groups giving them literally about ten times the money for a state with one third the population (Not like I’m not still enraged or anything…)
Anyway, I bring this up because there were few government entities in Michigan in 2004 that were offering domestic partner benefits; almost every public employee eligible to extend benefits to their domestic partner worked for a public university.
Of course after squealing for months that we were lying–which not all but most reporters swallowed unquestioningly–the week the amendment took effect the haters were in state court trying to overturn the domestic partner benefits. And with the hackerrific judiciary left to us by John Engler, they of course did exactly what the haters wanted.
Conservatives who talk smack about the rule of law are full of shit. They’ve never seen a contract that contained something they didn’t like that they didn’t want to abrogate.
DeVos was liar number one on that, too.
A lot of things suck about Michigan right now, but the fact that the west Michigan Dutch clown brigade keep failing when they put themselves on the ballot is hilarious.
Nothing a Republican likes better than smashing an educational system to bits
Except smashing a welfare system
Yeah, well, they won the last election, so they get to do whatever they want.
(Funny how that never seems to apply to Democrats.)
Democrats never actually won, you see – it was all voter fraud.