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Republican “Freedom:” Pepper Spray, Locked Doors, and Legalistic Gaming

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Yesterday, both MI’s House and Senate passed so-called “right to work” bills.

The measure will be unpopular enough in this state–particularly if Democrats and unions successfully communicate to all workers the law will mean a cut in pay even for non-union employees.

But one of the initial reactions has to do with how the measure was passed. Even before the vote was taken, the conservative Holland Sentinel (in Erik Prince’s hometown and where Dick DeVos, who pushed Republicans to pass this, has a mansion) scolded Republicans for rushing through bills now after they had taken much of the summer off.

Michigan lawmakers are in a headlong rush to cram a year’s worth of policy making into a few frantic weeks. The same legislators who took off much of the summer and fall for vacation and campaigning are now trying to resolve issues ranging from right-to-work to education reform to wolf hunting in their “lame duck” session. The haste is unnecessary and simply bad government — the best thing senators and representatives could do for Michigan citizens right now would be to go home.

A lame-duck legislative session — the meetings between the November general election and the expiration of the current legislators’ terms at the end of the year — is always a dangerous time. With the election passed and, in many cases, their departure from office imminent, legislators often cast votes and push bills in a lame-duck session they would never do if they had to answer to voters for their choices.

After last night’s votes, the Detroit Free Press (the more liberal of Detroit’s two newspapers) called the lame duck shenanigans a rampage.

If the Michigan Legislature maintains its current pace, it won’t feel right to call the weeks between the election and the end of the year the “lame-duck session” any longer. This year’s lame-duck session has been more like a raging bull — or a runaway steamroller, flattening constituencies and citizens’ rights in the process.

It called out a number of the tools Republicans are using (notably, appropriations that will make these laws referendum-proof) to make these rash decisions even more dangerous.

And all that’s before you look at how the anti-labor bill was passed yesterday: The police shut protestors out of the Capitol (one was even overheard saying they were keeping just the union members out). To get rid of a few protestors, they sprayed pepper spray inside the building. Even after Democrats got an injunction to open the Capitol, the House declared itself immune from the injunction. And as they’re doing with an Emergency Manager bill meant to override the referendum that eliminated Governor Snyder’s changes to that anti-democratic policy, they attached appropriations to the anti-labor law to make sure it couldn’t be overturned via referendum.

The biggest irony? To introduce this gross abuse of democracy, Snyder used the word “freedom” eleven times. This is what Republicans think freedom is: not only the “freedom” to work for $1,500 less a year, the “freedom” to have more accidents on the job, the “freedom” to send our kids to crummier schools. But also the kind of “freedom” delivered with mobs of cops holding out citizens, the “freedom” to be pepper sprayed, the “freedom” that can’t be overturned by democratic vote.

This is what Republicans have been talking about when they discuss “freedom” all along, I guess.

Rick Snyder Wants Michigan to be Indiana

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In a press conference, Rick Snyder just urged the MI legislature to pass a right to work bill (after having said it was not appropriate for MI in the past).

There were a number of funny aspects about the press conference, particularly the way Snyder and House Speaker Jase Bolger and Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville dodged repeated questions about whether Dick DeVos’ funding had some influence on this decision (they answered by pointing to all the conversations they had with UAW President Bob King, avoiding the funding question entirely). Given all that dodging, I think it safe to assume that Dick DeVos just bought the right to force down wages $1,500 for every worker in this state (as right to work legislation has been shown to do in other states).

But the funniest part of the press conference, IMO, was the way Snyder said he’s doing this because IN passed right to work last February. Over and over, he said we’re doing this because … Indiana! The governor of the beautiful, more diverse, and better educated MI now aspires for his state to be the less beautiful, more racist, and less well educated IN.

All that said, there’s nothing funny about this move generally. Republicans are adding an appropriation to the bill to make it impossible to overturn via referendum (all while preaching choice and freedom!). They mean to take that money out of MI workers’ pockets and they’re going to do it undemocratically to ensure the do so.

Now that MI’s Unemployment Has Gone Up over 1%, Will the Press Report It?

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I’ve been a little mystified by reporting on Michigan’s unemployment of late. There was this NYT story that gave credit to Rick Snyder credit for, “presiding over an employment rebound in a state that not long ago had the highest jobless rate in the nation” (and which I beat up here). There’s this MLive article that reports, “the state’s jobless rate has dropped from a high of 14.2 percent in August 2009 to 9 percent last month” without noting that that 9% was .7% higher than recent lows. And even this AP report on Rick Snyder’s decision to lay off a almost a quarter of the unemployment staffers (with the part timers Snyder laid off last month, 35% of unemployment staffers have been cut) didn’t say that unemployment actually started creeping up before Snyder made the layoff decisions.

Unemployment went up again in the last month, to 9.4% (some of this likely stems from a shift in model year layoffs and will probably go down next month), effectively reversing the last year of job gains and up 1.1% from its recent low.

Will the Snyder-loving press start reporting these job losses?

To be fair, I don’t think Snyder deserves all of the blame. Obama’s failure to provide real mortgage relief has been a big weight on economic growth in Michigan, even as the auto bailout and the energy investments have added jobs.

But Snyder has cut a lot of job-supporting efforts put in place under Jennifer Granholm. Not to mention–by gutting unemployment insurance staffers–cutting public employment so far as to bring down the rest of the economy.

Rick Snyder, like Mitt Romney is promising to do at the national level, promised his business friendly ways would grow MI’s economy. Instead, it looks like they’ve dampened the efforts that were put into place.

The Gray Lady Falls Off the Balance Beam

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Granted, it pertains to my right-wing governor, so it’s personal. But this NYT profile of Rick Snyder is a remarkable example of the perverse journalistic fetish for “balance” gone so badly awry it amounts to disinformation.

Let’s start with this summarized claim.

Republicans and business leaders here widely praise Mr. Snyder, crediting him with balancing the state’s once-troubled budget, dumping a state business tax and presiding over an employment rebound in a state that not long ago had the highest jobless rate in the nation. [my emphasis]

You’d think a newspaper might want to point out that MI’s unemployment actually turned around in August 2009–well before Snyder’s election in 2010 and not coincidentally the month after GM came out of bankruptcy. Unemployment dropped 3.3% before Snyder took over, dropped a further 2.6% after he did. But more significantly, unemployment in MI has started to creep up again–it’s up .7% since its recent low in April, to 9%.

Setting that record straight is critical to the rest of the article, since it repeatedly gushes about Rick Snyder refusing to deny Obama credit for MI’s turnaround.

Just before the Republican primary in Michigan in February, Mr. Snyder was asked in an interview whether Mr. Obama ought to be given credit for the state’s economic improvements. “I don’t worry about blame or credit,” he said. “It’s more about solving the problem.”

Nowhere in the article does “reporter” Monica Davey consider the possibility that Obama–and, in fact, Jennifer Granholm–have more to do with the turnaround than Snyder. Yet even many Republicans in this state would grant that the successful bailout of Chrysler and GM had a lot to do with the turnaround (though Republicans almost universally ignore the energy jobs Obama focused on MI).

So maybe Snyder refuses to deny Obama credit because such a claim would not be credible? It’s not a possibility the NYT article–which is supposed to be a celebration of a lack of ideology–even considers.

Which brings me to the other area where NYT’s idea of what constitutes balance is completely whacked: its treatment of the right to organize.

Read more →

In MI This Year It’s All about the Referenda

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MI’s Supreme Court just ruled that, in spite of the purportedly improper font size used on petitions, the referendum to overturn MI’s Emergency Manager law will be on November’s ballot. This may be a tough vote: obviously if we can get rid of the law we can begin to talk about how MI can craft a recovery as a whole, rather than leaving behind our cities that have been devastated by globalization and segregation.

But I hope two of the other referenda on the ballot will help to push the EM repeal law over the top.

First, there’s Protect Working Families (AKA Protect Our Jobs). If passed, it will make collective bargaining a constitutional right in MI. It’s akin to OH’s Prop 2, in that it will rally labor, in an even more heavily unionized state. I canvassed for this referendum over the weekend in a modest middle class neighborhood, and it seemed there was a lot of support.

Then there’s Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs. That will mandate 25% of MI’s energy come from renewable sources by 2025. Grist’s David Roberts described it as the country’s most important clean energy vote this year, partly because of the way that clean energy could fundamentally alter our economic picture in the state.

Hell, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Michigan could power itself with onshore wind alone.

The more Michigan develops its local renewable resources, the more electricity generation becomes a boon, an economic growth engine, rather than merely a cost. Energy money stays in the state and circulates in local communities (Michigan already has a substantial wind and solar supply chain [PDF]) rather than being transferred to out-of-state fossil-fuel companies. Michigan wins: more economic activity, more jobs, more pollution-free energy, more pride.

Those three referenda could dramatically make MI’s economy more fair and sustainable. Which means there will be unbelievable amounts of money spent to defeat them.

And then there’s the referendum that DDay called “Son of Prop 13,” which would require a supermajority to raise taxes. It would effectively lock in the reapportionment of taxes that Rick Snyder put into place, and take an already dysfunctional legislature and add another barrier to fixing the state’s woes.

Put that against the background of the Presidential election. One rule of MI politics is Democrats succeed when the state’s African American population turns out. Rick Snyder vetoed the kind of voter suppression measures that FL and PA have passed, though there were already some prohibitive measures on the ballot, particularly effecting students. Which means the African Americans who try to vote should be able to. Then there’s Obama’s popularity, which for obvious reasons is probably greater than in any other rust belt state.

So we should have a fairly democratic electorate come out in November. Let’s hope that makes the difference on these referenda.

Rick Snyder: “Look at Me!!! And, Oh, BTW, Mitt Was Born in MI”

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I was pretty gleeful when Romney’s folks hinted yesterday that Rick Snyder was going to endorse today. While Snyder’s approval levels are improving from abysmal levels, he’s still unpopular. Plus, he’s a rich man from liberal Ann Arbor; Snyder’s own biography will emphasize precisely the things conservatives distrust in the rich Governor from liberal MA. Most of all, it raises the likelihood we’ll have a replay of 2000, when McCain won the primary here largely because people saw it as a way to damage Governor John Engler, who had aggressively campaigned for George W. Bush.

Boy, the party must have pushed Snyder hard to endorse here, because there’s little upside to it for him.

I’m even more amused now that I’ve read what Snyder said in his endorsement.

The whole endorsement is just over 600 words long. Of that, the first 62 words blather about Snyder, not Mitt. After a transition finally bringing him around to Mitt, Snyder spends the first 130 words of his description of Mitt to explain that Mitt was born here.

Let’s start with one important fact. Our country has never elected a president born and raised in Michigan. Mitt Romney was born in Detroit. His father served with distinction as governor. Before that, he was president of American Motors. Mitt grew up with the prospects of the auto industry and of Michigan discussed around the dinner table.

He has deep ties to our state. Mitt understands the challenges confronting Michigan as few Americans do.

Snyder spends a paragraph transitioning back to MI again (effectively saying, “Mitt’s a businessman like me”–which brings me back to my earlier point about how Snyder will emphasize the reasons the GOP base is suspicious of Mitt). Here’s where it gets interesting: Snyder, as he often does, claims credit for things he had little to do with (notably, MI’s turnaround), and then says Obama–who should get some credit for it–is screwing up nationally.

Michigan has laid out an impressive game plan for success. Across both peninsulas, Michiganians are working together with relentless positive action to move our state forward. We’ve made the tough decisions and bold reforms that are rejuvenating our state, such as restoring Michigan’s fiscal integrity.

By eliminating a nagging $1.5 billion budget deficit last year, we’re now in the position of recommending strategic, long-term investments in priority areas such as education, economic development and infrastructure. Simply put, we’re getting it right and we’re getting it done.

In contrast to Michigan’s blueprint, Washington is still at the drawing board. Deficit spending continues to run rampant. For the first time since World War II, the nation’s total debt burden exceeds the size of our entire economy. With Washington running trillion-dollar annual deficits, our nation’s recovery has been the slowest since the 1930s.

Washington is not on a sustainable course. Mitt Romney will change the direction.

Another quarter of Snyder’s “endorsement” claims credit for himself and promises to put the plans that had been working before he cut them–education and business development–back into place.

Only then, almost two-thirds of the way into his “endorsement,” does Snyder get around to telling Michiganders (actually, he calls us “Michiganians,” which is a bit of a departure for him) why they should vote for Romney–aside from the fact that he was born here and therefore MI might claim credit for him if he were to win. Vote for Romney, Snyder gets around to exhorting after he spends large chunks of his op-ed begging readers first to support him, because Romney will cut taxes and address the deficit and not force all states to adopt RomneyC– I mean, ObamaCare.

I hope all Michiganians will join me in supporting the candidacy of this favorite son of our great state.

It doesn’t exactly read like a full-throated endorsement, even while Snyder’s pitching that Romney will do for the US what Snyder claims credit for doing for MI. More like a squeal of “don’t hurt me!!!!” while reminding us what we already know, that Mitt was born here.

Vote for Mitt Romney, Rick Snyder says, because his accident of birth is one of the best things I can think to say about him.

49% of Michigan’s African Americans to Lose Their Right to Self-Governance

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And now, as a break from all the shitty national news, I wanted to update you on shitty news from my home front.

Governor Snyder is about to start the process of appointing an Emergency Financial Manager for Detroit (though note, they’re not just “Financial” Mangers anymore).

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, members of Detroit City Council and representatives from the city’s labor and religious communities will hold a news conference at 5 p.m. today to address the city’s financial crisis and the possibility of a financial review by the state.

Bing and the City Council have refused to initiate such a review. The 30-day review process would allow state officials to examine the city’s finances and any proposals from the city as to how it will eliminate some of its debt.

Bing and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had a conversation Wednesday, and Snyder informed the mayor he intended to start the emergency manager process beginning with the review.

As I have noted before, one of the most troubling aspects of MI’s very troubling EFM law is the way it arises out of and exacerbates MI’s history of segregation. Effectively, in the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans decided that rather than addressing the effects of globalization on our state regionally–across our many segregated cities and suburbs–the heavily African American cities would be on their own (Ecorse, which is 40% African American, is the one real exception to the general rule that the cities that have been in and out of EFM status are majority African American). And even though the racism in the state isn’t as bad as it once was, the legacy of that go-it-alone approach means the cities that will be targeted for EFM status remain predominantly African American.

Over 82% of Detroit’s 713,777 residents are African American (close to 7% are Latinos). 42% of all of MI’s 1,403,477 African Americans live in Detroit.

In fact, as Eclectablog and I calculated today, 49% of MI’s African Americans will soon be living in a city the elected government of which has been replaced by the state.

Almost half the African Americans in the state.

The intent of this EFM law may not be to take away the right of local self-governance from one particular race of people. But we’re getting very close to the point where it will have done so for the majority of African Americans in MI.

Stimulus in Action, MI Edition

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I’ve said a couple of times here that Jennifer Granholm’s record as governor was better than I gave her credit for, particularly economically.

The press is beginning to do some of the same reassessment. They’re discovering that, in spite of the Governor Engler tax cuts that made it harder to respond to MI’s downturn, Granholm did succeed in laying the groundwork for recovery.

But over the past year, a steady stream of economic statistics and research finds that Granholm is looking better in hindsight.

Here are some of the surprising Granholm highlights:

  • Michigan tied with Minnesota for the nation’s largest decline in unemployment from 2009 to 2010. The state also experienced the nation’s sixth-largest increase in per-capita personal income in that same year-to-year period.
  • State taxes as a percentage of personal income in 2011 are $7 billion lower than they were under John Engler in 2000. The fiscal problems the state faced were magnified by one statistic: Michigan’s overall tax revenues peaked during the prosperous year of 2000 and are not expected to return to that level until 2020.
  • Though the Granholm-backed Michigan Business Tax — the so-called “job-killer” tax — was still fully in place, the state achieved a substantial bounce in manufacturing jobs in 2010, a trend that was projected to continue throughout 2011.
  • Michigan ranks No. 1 in the nation for job creation improvement in a recent Gallup survey of state job markets, and Gov. Rick Snyder took office with some Granholm momentum that is expected to produce 64,600 jobs in 2011.

What this article doesn’t mention, of course, is that in addition to Granholm’s tireless effort to attract jobs and foster some diversity, MI also benefited from the massive government intervention of the auto bailout and received a number of grants that helped make possible factories like the Johnson Controls factory.

Speaking of which, here’s what the CEO of JCI, Steve Roell, had to say last Thursday about all the job creation Obama didn’t want to talk about.

Through innovation and investment in technology and people, Johnson Controls is a leader in the energy storage industry. We are investing more than $460 million in our advanced battery business for manufacturing and technical facilities here in Michigan and the U.S. These investments will lead to over 700 new jobs, retention of another 400, and provide approximately 1,000 construction workers.

We are doing that through several major efforts:

  • We recently announced we will be converting our Toledo, Ohio-area plant to produce batteries for Start-Stop vehicles, which have been successful in the European market and will be introduced next year in the U.S. These batteries help reduce fuel consumption and emissions by 5-12% for internal combustion engine vehicles with little added cost to the consumer. This investment will retain 400 jobs, and create 50 new positions and 800 construction jobs.
  • We recently opened our newly renovated Battery Technology and Testing Center in Milwaukee. It is the largest energy storage R&D center in the country, and we have added 60 new jobs. I’m pleased to say we just learned yesterday that Johnson Controls is receiving additional Department of Energy funding for research for developing green manufacturing processes and the next generation of lithium batteries.
  • This facility in Holland will be the first in the U.S. to produce complete lithium-ion battery cells and systems for hybrid and electric vehicles, producing battery systems for U.S. based automakers, such as the Ford Transit Connect. Employment at this facility will be 320 people at full capacity. We have committed to building a second facility in the U.S. Once we identify a location, build the plant and get to full capacity, we expect to add nearly 300 additional jobs.

These projects are great examples of public-private partnerships that use innovation and technology to produce products that reduce fuel consumption and create jobs.
We are very grateful for the outstanding support we have received from the White House, the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of Michigan and the city of Holland for their vision in building an advanced battery industry for vehicles in the U.S. and for the financial incentives they have provided. [my emphasis]

Even perspectives on the auto bailout are improving (as the graphic above, from focus groups associated with this poll, shows).

Yet seemingly at the moment when attitudes about government investment in the economy are changing, the Obama Administration wants to pretend it never happened.

MI is by no means out of the woods yet (Governor Snyder’s cuts of both incentives and social benefits risk doing real damage). But it’s clear that it had started to turn around in 2009-2010. It’s clear that, partly because of government stimulus, what was then the basket-case of the US has started to turn around.

Yet for some reason, the government wants to avoid taking any lesson from this.

Attacking Romney Rather than the People Looting our Economy

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This Politico story–“revealing” Obama’s campaign plan to brand Multiple Choice Mitt as “weird”–has gotten a lot of attention in the twittersphere.

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.

The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.

[snip]

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”

“First, they’ve got to like you, and there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Chicago Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.”

A senior Obama adviser was even more cutting, suggesting that the Republican’s personal awkwardness will turn off voters.

“There’s a weirdness factor with Romney and it remains to be seen how he wears with the public,” said the adviser, noting that the contrasts they’d drive between the president and the former Massachusetts governor would be “based on character to a great extent.”

Now, no matter how reprehensible this campaign strategy is (particularly for the way it feels like Mormon-bashing), and for all Politico probably feels it has “won the morning” by printing it, both are missing something.

This campaign has already been in place.

A significant chunk of the tweets the Michigan Democratic Party sends out, for example, focus on Romney–showing Obama leading him, playing up GOP opposition to him, dissing his fundraising, recalling his stance on the auto bailout, branding his appearance in MI his “hypocrisy tour,” pitching other states’ anti-Mitt swag. While it has gotten better of late, for a while the MDP focused more on Romney-bashing than on Rick Snyder-bashing–which of course meant no one was attacking Snyder’s plan to tax seniors to pay for a tax cut for businesses.

Now, I understand MI may have a particularly driving reason to do this. Not only might Mitt’s ties to MI give him a critical edge over Obama that could flip a crucial swing state. But even at the primary level, MI’s cross-over voting might mean if Democrats support Romney, it could make a significant difference in him winning the Republican primary.

Yet, again, this early focus on Mitt has distracted from where I would like Democratic messaging to be targeted–not only on Snyder, but on the businesses that have looted our country. I would suggest this might explain why MI Dems have such little confidence in their party right now.

Obama may feel like he needs to call Mitt names to win re-election. But if that’s the sole purpose of the Democratic Party between now and then, it will leave a vacuum precisely where the most important messaging needs to be.

Some Context on MI’s Emergency Financial Manager Law

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On Saturday, I described how the democratically-elected government of Benton Harbor, a poor, segregated MI city about an hour south of me, lost its power to the city’s Emergency Financial Manager.

There are two parts of the story that I didn’t explain, which this post from wizardkitten does well. First, the EFM law goes back some years in MI and EFMs already had a great deal of power.

The idea of the state appointing an Emergency Financial Manager for local governments in distress actually dates as far back as 1988, and that led to Public Act 72 of 1990 (Blanchard did it!). Basically, it said that in order for the state to protect it’s own credit and fiscal operations, any city or school district that was on the verge of bankruptcy would receive a review of their finances from a state-appointed team, and, if that panel found that the city or school district did not have an adequate plan to get out of trouble, a manager would then come in and help clean up the mess.

The manager could hire staff and direct existing staff. They did not need public approval for a new fiscal plan. They could do anything they wanted with the outstanding financial obligations (i.e., the bills). They could renegotiate labor contracts, but they could not abrogate those contracts. They could eliminate positions except of those of elected officials, cut pay and benefits even for elected officials, sell property, review payroll – anything but touch retirement. They could not raise taxes. They also had the ability to start Chapter 9 bankruptcy if all else had failed.

Michigan’s initial muted response to Governor Rick Snyder’s move to increase EFM powers derives, IMO, from our familiarity with the concept and the fact so many are at a loss to figure out what to do with cities gutted by globalization. We’re the frogs in the boiling water of globalization, I guess, and we didn’t notice the heat going up on democracy itself.

The other really important part of Snyder’s new empowerment of EFMs has to do with the real target: teachers. Specifically, the teachers in Detroit’s public schools.

I believe this is a warm-up for Detroit, and perhaps the 150 other school districts that Snyder’s budget cuts are going to put closer to bankruptcy. DPS EMF Robert Bobb has indicated that he “planned to exercise his power as emergency manager to unilaterally modify the district’s collective bargaining agreement”, and by law the school district has now sent out 5,466 layoff notices to its union employees, and 250 pink slips to their administrators as well. (that is nearly a yearly occurrence anyway lately – but this time it takes on a new urgency.)

Bobb, under order by law to produce a plan to balance the books, came up with closing half of Detroit’s schools by 2014, 70 to be exact. He doesn’t want to do this, as class size is expected to swell to 60 and parents would flee the district costing the schools even more money – but the state has given the order. Some schools may turn to charters, and a GM-style bankruptcy that separates the bad debt has been talked about. Whatever happens, it’s going to be seismic.

As far as the city goes, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is asking for benefit concessions from city employees and a new tax on casinos to help balance a budget that has a $155 million deficit and could grow to $1.2 billion by 2015, and his plan is already meeting resistance. Bing claims that, “If we are unable or unwilling to make these changes, an emergency financial manager will be appointed by the state to make them for us” – a bit of leverage, given what is going on with the Detroit Public Schools, and now this takeover in Benton Harbor. The heat is getting turned up fast in Motown, and it should reach a boiling point soon.

One other reason, I think, why we boiling froggies haven’t reacted sooner: the UAW. What EFMs have in store for teachers really matches what the auto companies accomplished with UAW’s workers even before the 2009 bailout. The UAW willingly accepted a two-tier system of wages (effectively meaning starting UAW workers make less than workers at transplant factories in other states), and took on the costs of retiree health care.

In other words, one of our state’s unions has already been gutted in the face of harsh threats. The threat of EFMs will make it easier to do so with the public unions too.

It’s all about turning MI from a state with a solid middle class into one with desperate workers willing to make huge sacrifices just to keep their jobs.