Snyder's Very Stubborn and Fiercely Proud.
We learn this from those trying to reason with him. This fact is coming from those inside the paneled walls, from his select team. Outside, fellow Republicans are getting a near-death chill. What looked an easy and slick political coup, setting back opponents 50 years, has become a deadly and inflamed civic travesty.
Peek Inside Snyder's Political Hell
When Michigan seniors learn of their heavy hit, a 300% increase in their tax burden and the media's human interest stories begin to crank out about how Miss Peach is being evicted from her home due to her inability to pay her new "Snyder Tax" every bright and even the "no clue" politicians in the Republican Caucus will be heading for the tall grass. Tea Party advocates will be pulling a "who me?" as they fall away, disassociating themselves from traditional Republicans over "new taxes."
When the harsh and heavy cuts in the Lansing BIG GOVERNMENT controlled school foundation grant is cut by $470 or more, parents will panic and schools will go into chaos and shutdown.
When small cities like Saginaw see a tailored Brooks Brothers suited, Bloomfield Hills attorney arrive at their city hall in his performance BMW; given full authority to run the town, like a dictator. Reality will dawn on the local officals and the angered public as they learn just what it means to be shutdown and liquidated, slick attorney style; and not on the cheap either. An Emergency Finance officer is permitted under the new GOP legislation to earn far more than even the Governor's salary per year, plus expenses, and like the days under the Colonial British, where households were forced to billet Red Coats, these cities will be forced to pony-up the lawyer's expenses, with no recourse.
As the state sees the Michigan State Police so reduced in numbers as to become an ineffective force for major crime investigations and pulled off the freeways to be replaced by far less professional, politically controlled sheriff's county mounties, a sense of dread and fear for public safety will be palatable.
As the reality of the plight of over 800,000 poor families and families with children are forced off assistance and have to go literally begging to local churches and neighbors for food and shelter, Rick Snyder will become a despised Dickensian pinchpenny troll.. Michigan is better than that. Becoming a Mecca of Misery has no appeal to companies considering "culture" and "quality of life" as they look for possible new start-ups in Michigan.
Conservative activists and diehards are panicked. Reports one conservative blogger:
"No Michigan city has ever gone into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, (Charles Moore, senior managing director at Conway MacKenzie Inc., a turnaround and restructuring firm based in Birmingham ) said, nor has any school district, although Kalkaska ended one school year early in the 1990s after it ran out of money.
"But all government entities are feeling more pain as Michigan's economy continues its sluggish recovery from a decade-long downturn that substantially worsened in the 2008-09 recession.
"And now Snyder's proposal to cut revenue sharing for local governments by $100 million and school districts by nearly $800 million in the budget year starting Oct. 1 could push more governments toward financial distress."
This right-leaning blogger went on to quote a Flint Firefighter about the measure Andy Dillon has made to "soften" opposition to the EFM's by proposing that a mayor may be given the powers of an EFM. To which the firefighter, experienced in his department's calls to up to 10 emergencies at day, expresses a new fear:
"The biggest fear I have is that they give a mayor or a city manager the same powers as a financial manager. That person could abuse that authority."
The opportunities for cronyism, corruption, and abuse are rife in the design of this terrible Snyder-led legislation, designed to create heavy pressure on local units to force local workers to surrender pensions and working conditions, as well as cutting salaries.
The Snyder plan to decertify unions and raise havoc with workers is a brutally cruel move, far more injurious to our local institutions than the acts of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, all Snyder claims to the contrary. The present GOP majorities in the legislature have forgotten, if they have even yet learned, the tables will turn, and the public's ire will be focused on them and not the present crisis Snyder wants to take advantage of. What they need to realize is that that's to be expected. Only pro-active, collaborative legislation and a healthy sense of the zoom-out view will benefit the party and Michigan in the long-run.
The Republican blogger ends with this lament:
"The Bill Milliken saying is that GOOD POLICY IS GOOD POLITICS. I rarely agree with anything Milliken did, to the point where I'd vote for most democrats over him. That saying is true, and the inverse is even more true. Bad policy is bad politics. SNYDER IS PUSHING BAD POLICY RIGHT NOW. IT'S HORRIBLE POLITICS."
There'll be hell to pay.
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