Governor Snyder's True Colors Show in Michigan's Right to Work Battle

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-whitmer/michigan-right-to-work_b_2272250.html

Governor Snyder's True Colors Show in Michigan's Right to Work Battle
By Gretchen Whitmer, State Senator, Michigan

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder rose to power in 2010 cloaked in the veil of a moderate. He appealed to voters by saying he was going to be "laser focused" on the policies that grow Michigan's economy rather than get mired in the politics that have kept us off that track for too long. He promised he understood what it would take to prop up the middle class despite being a millionaire himself. He said time and time again that he would run Michigan like a business and forge bipartisan coalitions to end politics as we know it.

The one problem with that? It was all a lie.

Last week, in a press conference hidden safely away from the scrutiny of Michigan's public, Governor Snyder removed any remaining shred of credibility as a moderate with a stunning about-face on "Right to Work," a policy that he himself had recently declared "too divisive" and not something that was in Michigan's best interest. Snyder said not only was he now going to sign Right to Work into law, but that he and his fellow Republican legislative leaders had already schemed to set the bills for a vote that same day, eviscerating the public's right to input.

Nobody, including me, the top ranking Democrat in state government, had even seen the language. To make matters worse, they choreographed a heavy-handed police presence to intimidate the public from even coming to see this legislative disgrace first hand. And when they still showed, the governor ordered the state police to illegally lock our citizens out of the Capitol, even locking some legislators out in the process as well.

[gollygee]

1. I hope things are difficult for those Republican state lawmakers in the next election

Unfortunately, some areas of Michigan are so strongly Republican that they'd have to be taken out in the primaries. I have previously chosen to vote in the Republican primary instead of the Dem primary in cases like this. I might again. I will always have a Republican state rep.

I'm at the point where I think all we can do is hope the pendulum shifts and people realize that this anti-union, radical free market capitalism economic strategy is in the best interest of very few, and only helps make very rich people obscenely rich. I think our best weapon is getting the word out - talking about it and using social media. The politicians who do this kind of thing count on having people either uneducated or staying in the dark. That's why they do things like plan everything out and calling for a vote before making it public.