“I’m a proud Republican and I voted for these people,” said Ray Cornell, 74, a retired construction project manager from East Grand Rapids. “They never came out and said they were going to cut education and now they’re increasing my taxes."



...At the town hall meeting, Jack Prince, 62, of Grand Rapids, said it seems Snyder is blaming the little guy for the mistakes of past administrations.



“It’s like Robin Hood in reverse,” Prince said. “After 30 years of trickle up economics these people truly believe that some little public school librarian is to blame for this mess we’re in."

• We need 807,000 valid signatures to get the recall on the ballot this November. Due to about 20% of them standing a chance of being thrown out, we're aiming for at least 1.1 Million.



• The process for approval of the petition will take around 20 days. So we're aiming for May 8th as a starting date for collecting signatures.

I meant to put the above clip up on Tuesday night but Rachel's powerful analysis is so relevant-- and will be for so long-- that this message is fresh any time you hear it. It isn't really just about a small town in southwest Michigan you never heard of before. It's about the authoritarian takeover push by dangerously radical, basically interchangeable, Republican governors. She's talking about Rick Snyder above but she could just as well be talking about Rick Scott or Rick Walker. Or Rick Perry or John Kasich or even Paul LePage (who agreed with Maine Democrats that he deserves an F for his performance as governor so far).Snyder has tried his best to leave the crazy theatrics for the rest of them but he may well have accomplished the most evil of any of them with a blatant attack on democracy itself. As Rachel points out, what happened to local self-rule and small government. It was, apparently, all a facade for outright, classic fascism. He's gone beyond just trying to eviscerate unions-- also one of Hitler's earliest initiatives (and for very much the same reason as Snyder's)-- he's now trying a kind of SS of corporate "financial professionals" to displace popularly-elected local governments and break union contracts. There's a lot of buyers' remorse among Michigan voters.Hope on the horizon? Snyder's power grab is being greeted by recall petitions . Michigan Citizens United is on the way and their spokesperson put it very starkly: “We don’t like the tax decrease on corporations or the tax increase on Michigan families." Their petition seeking a recall process was filed yesterday

Labels: class war, Michigan, Rachel Maddow, Republican governors, Rick Snyder