Tricky Rick & His 'Nerd Herd' Play Dangerous Economic Game in Michigan

"Re-invented" Michigan is headed in a disastrous economic direction: Feed the Corporations & Business Buddies v. Starve the Poor, the Elderly, and Shank Our Children.

How Truly Nuts Is This?

Snyder's slick 2 billion dollar tax increase/shift means: Less sales taxes, less commercial, fewer new customers and other diminishing business activity and expansion of small businesses. These are the direct results of headstrong, stone-hearted Tea-Publicans in Michigan's Super Majority Legislature having pushed through 2011 massive tax hikes on the poor, having stolen promise and limited savings from retirees, and having upped the daily survival expenses of vital public sector workers.

READER: "Titanic shift in Lansing" by Judy Putnam on February 25, 2011 at the Michigan League for Human Services


Herd of Robber Barons during turn of the century Age of Greed

All of this Snyder CEO inspired "harvesting" of nearly $2 billion in new taxes was raised to blatantly treat the Nerd's business buddies with a massive and excessive business bail-out/gift. Tax hikes of this magnitude will impact directly consumer demand and sales across the state. Less sales taxes, less commercial, fewer new customers and other diminishing business activity, as well as fewer small business successes will be the result.

Exactly how much of a cut-in-demand will result from Snyder's massive new taxes remains to be seen. But unavoidable reductions will gut the joy of the Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (now luxuriating in its power to strip monies away from the poor, the retired on limited incomes and pensions, children, and public servants) is headed for a rude awaking.


Snyder and a few of the political gaggle following the Nerd Herd, Signing Business Tax Cuts June 2011 (Official Photo)

The new Michigan Income Tax hit on investment income will dull and diminish the draw Michigan has had with retirees who have husbanded a personal portfolio intended to care for themselves to the end of life. Given the very nature of the radical shift from reasonable taxes on business and industry (sectors that utilize the common spaces and infrastructure as a means to produce profit and trade) to those whose working days are over is especially off-putting and repulsive to elders who can easily move themselves and their "kitty" to a friendlier state. Start subtracting retirees from drug stores, restaurants, retail stores, and from doctors and hospital care, then see for yourself what a terrible blunder the Nerd herd has committed. Seniors with their carefully stashed savings are a huge, stable financial asset to any community.

Add to the Nerd's negative tax scenario the hard facts about jobs in Michigan reported by Susan Demas:

"While Michigan added 63,500 jobs in 2011, it could have been more. Why? Well, the private sector grew, as University of Michigan economists reported. There were 77,500 private-sector jobs added. But the overall number of jobs added was brought down by the decline in government sector jobs.

CALCULATION: 2011 Lost 14,000 or is it 17,000?

And that's one reason why Michigan's economic recovery hasn't been as robust as downturns past. 'It's been brought down because government jobs are declining,' economist George Fulton.

That trend is set to continue in the future. Private sector jobs are projected to rise by 35,300 in 2012, 35,500 in 2013 and 52,000 in 2014. But government job declines will offset growth in all three years, according to the U of M forecast, bringing the overall projected total for the state to 26,000 jobs in 2012, 28,500 jobs in 2013 and 46,800 jobs in 2014.

And Michigan's unemployment rate isn't projected to slip below 9 percent, on average, until 2014.

So while the right-wing economic argument -- that has practically become accepted as fact -- is that government doesn't create jobs, the reality is that it does. And cutting government has a real economic impact, and it's not always positive." (emphasis added)

This is the Michissippification of Michigan, plain and simple.

READER:
Poorest families hit 1,000 times harder than rich by Michigan tax changes (Rob South Feb 1, 2012) and Report: Tax Changes Hit Low-Income Families the Hardest (MLHS Feb 2012)

See Also: Michigan Republicans say Taxes are a Sin. But Taxing the Poor to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies Isn't?  -- Discover Michissippi’s (Michigan's) Corporate Bosses: The Elites Who Now Run Snyder & the GOP Super Majority Legislature  -- The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People

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Reality is that no Cuts by Gov Rick Snyder Would Be Needed If ...

To pay for Snyder's radical, deliberate revenue shift, along with changes in Michigan's tax law that also reduced K-12 funding, Gov. Snyder's budget is proposing deep cuts in education.

Rick Snyder says that THIS WILL FORCE LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO BECOME MORE EFFICIENT (cut supplies, and curtail all manner of instuction and programs) and lower their costs. School districts would get $300 less per student, on top of a $170 cut this year. (This us un-precidently radical, no other governor set out to do this not even Engler who found more money for education, not hundreds of millions less.

In particular, Snyder wants school boards to extract concessions from unions by getting employees to pay 20 percent of their health care premiums. The governor also asserts that schools can save through consolidation of services and improving purchasing practices. The budget cuts will also make it much more difficult for unions to negotiate pay raises.

Concessions with labor unions are unlikely to come easily. If unions balk, teacher layoffs will be imminent, leading to impacts such as larger class sizes (and statewide acrimony and unnecessary disruption of our children's vital education).

These remarks are interpolated from material presented by The Michigan Truth Squad, Project of the Center for Michigan, Governor Rick Snyder's Proposed Budget Analysis 2.24.11

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Gov. Snyder: Stand & Deliver Your Budget Cuts LIVE & IN PERSON

Commentary on Gov Rick Snyder State of the State and Michigan Budget Cuts.

Let the Governor make his announcement of "bomb" like impact on TV, live. Let us see how much he shares in the grief and pain he is delivering to people of this state. This man who has skipped out on debates and has hidden his intentions quite nicely until now needs to be seen delivering the "pain and suffering" in person. We need to search his face and see his eyes, is he with us or is he somewhere up there over us doing what corporate bosses do all the time, handing down the edicts and the hardships and then driving off to cocktails and after glow with Neo-Engleresque advisers.

Snyder must follow his live announcement with a lengthy news conference, so that the public, who can not be there to receive Snyder's "destruction of the state message" and immediately respond, can at least read about it in greater detail the next day, or see on the 11 pm news an accounting for this historic infliction of unprecedented "pain."

Everyone should be allowed to look very, very closely at that gallery populated by the Mackinac Center operatives and be ready to see if any of their "sacred hogs" are cut or slaughtered by the cutting of the Snyder Team. If the Mackinac Center is high-five-ing that's a very negative signal. These "budget hawks" are driven not by the fear of those who elected Rick, but are totally beholden to those aggressive Corporate interests who "own them".

MacCen is in league with those TeaPublican Legislators who strode into Lansing full of rage and revenge against parts of government and society they dislike and now are bullheadedly pushing citizens out of the People's House, the state capitol; hardhearted pols locking out many: elderly, poor, unemployed, into that cold night.

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