

In 2011, Rick Snyder talked about shared sacrifice and raised taxes on poor people, the elderly and the middle class. He slashed spending on schools and gave corporations a big tax cut because they’re the “job creators.”

What do we have to show for this shared sacrifice? Crumbling roads, shuttered schools, “emergency management,” eliminated services, and outsourcing to private companies that provide service best described as criminal. After 5 years of Rick Snyder and the Republicans in Lansing in control, this state is a mess. Meanwhile, the Michigan legislature spends way too much money on luxury offices and strips the school aid fund to build a rich people’s playground in downtown Detroit.

Where did Michigan’s tax dollars go that Republicans thought we wouldn’t notice, and vote to increase taxes on ourselves? That is the most contemptible thing of all. Our government is too scared to do their jobs and come up with a real way to fund new road repairs, so they thought they would blackmail us into doing it to ourselves. We certainly haven’t had a governor in Lansing in years. Snyder had his hired goon, Richard Baird, running the state for him. Now he’s too busy with getting the rest of the nation to notice him to care what’s happening in Michigan. Elections have consequences. If more people had bothered to vote in November, we wouldn’t be stuck with the Nerd now.

The people of Michigan are fed up with Rick Snyder and his regressive taxes on the middle class, the poor, and the elderly. Our governor and state legislators need to go back to Lansing and do their damn jobs. Business doesn’t want to move to a state with roads in the condition Michigan roads are in. Business also puts the most wear and tear on roads. Make the businesses who got the tax cuts in 2011 pay more to fix the roads.

Of course, every time Snyder doesn’t get his way he retaliates by doing something even worse. We voted down emergency managers and he passed a new law so he could keep them. We tried to protect unions in the state constitution and he retaliated with Freedom to Freeload. Tonight we’re celebrating because we collectively told the Nerd to stuff it, but tomorrow the roads are still wrecked and who knows if anything will be done about it.