Your line: “If you demand something as a right, ask yourself if someone else has to pay for it” goes that extra step.

Thank you for your many great posts.

Being sick and tired of being sick and tired can be a powerful motivator. I hope you are right that the citizens of MI will give Snyder a chance to make this work.

Best to you and hope to see you on these pages again soon.

The democrat party in the state house here are not a very radical group. I could not imagine 14 of them leaving state, however; I could not be 100% positive. He has proposed taxing the pensions of retirees, and that is getting much more response here than this latest legislation, mostly negative, he explains it as fair for everyone. He is getting some serious flack because he wants to do away with the “movie tax credit”.. basically a giveaway or welfare for producers. He stated that for every dollar spent on the credit only .26 cents is given back in return. As a businessman, that will not stand

Snyder has laid out the fact that the public sector in MI has more employees than manufacturing or the private sector. The odd thing about all of this is that while the teachers and unions are fit to be tied, you do not here about it much in the media… local or otherwise….. not sure why. My husband and I both find this a bit odd. The reality is that MI has been hurting for a very long time… We never came back from the recession in 2001, and Granholm was.. well you know… a real tool….His poll numbers have dropped drastically since the budget was introduced. His response? ” Of course you would expect that, but when people wrap their arms around it and the task at hand, they will turn around, we have to change MI now,period…” The governor is not living in the governors mansion, and is taking a salary of 1.00 per year for his entire term. He is quite positive, not interested in the cameras at all, and has the respect of both parties at the capitol. He is spending a lot of time in Detroit to work with the democrat mayor there, Dave Bing. My personal opinion is that the fine people of this state are so sick and tired of being sick and tired that they just might give him a chance.

And to think it was so very nearly “Property” there at the end. I think I would much prefer to sacrifice the poetry for a concrete acknowledgement of the way the world really works.

The problem is, the same bill of rights gives me the right to NOT join a union, and if I’m an employer it gives me the right to NOT hire or retain any employee who joins a union.

Of course, THOSE exercises of free association would be the end of the unions, and that would be…inconvenient to our “progress” towards whatever it is that progressives think we should be progressing towards. So, in the best tradition of leftists, it was determined that some people get to be a little more equal than others.

Bottom line, the very existance of unions is a perversion of the constitution.

http://www.redstate.com/lineholder/2011/03/14/governor-snyder-and-putting-the-unions-on-a-diet/

It basically allows the state legislature to expand EFM responsibilities to the point that public union employees, including teachers, could actually be fired in order to reduce the costs of “fat” processes.

It also opens the door to other options in the state, such as charter schools, private/public sector co-ops for development ventures, etc.

I’m a distance and see all kinds of positive possibilities that might exist in this legislation, but a great deal depends on how the general public in MI responds to it.

If you are a local, is there any insight you can provide on this?

Until such time as He intervenes, we just have to keep doing the best we can to preserve what is of good in this nation that we love.

I will admit, while I have been aware for sometime that Michigan is a nanny state, I really had no idea it was as bad as it is until the governor’s new budget was presented. When you attempt to tell a member of the ‘government’ work force that there are more public sector unions employed in Michigan than manufacturing jobs or private sector jobs, you are met with the whole ‘rights’ issue you have described.