The State of Michigan: Another Republican Failure

There’s an excellent Salon article today exposing the failed policies and resulting human devastation of yet another Republican governor, Michigan’s Rick Snyder. Despite the reality that his state is in an economic free-fall, Snyder is touring the country trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse with highly selective and dubious claims about his austerity program. Like Brownback in Kansas, Walker in Wisconsin and Scott in Florida, Snyder is using slight of hand and verbal obfuscation to confuse the rest of the country about what is actually going on in his state.

Like his fellow Republican governors, Snyder has cut taxes for the wealthy, drained money from public education and social services, attacked unions, ignored or repealed corporate safety and environmental regulations, and disenfranchised minority residents even more than they already were. Snyder, however, has upped the anti by instituting “emergency management legislation” that allows him to send in self-appointed “managers” to take over the running of school districts and, in some cases, entire cities.

Despite the fact that the austerity policies of all these Tea Party Republican governors have proven to be dismal failures and caused significant hardship for the citizens of their states, the corporate media is paying scant attention to this disaster in the making. The reason why is quite simple. The oligarchy running this country loves what Snyder and his colleagues are doing. The human toll is of no importance to them, as long as the corporate monster is being fed and obeyed. Snyder, Brownback, Walker and Scott are the best friends a CEO ever had, and the worst governors the people have ever had to endure.

A detailed explanation of how "Trickle Down" economics works

Politicians cling to economic austerity despite dismal performance

Economic austerity is one of those things that just sounds logical and right. How can a country have a healthy economy if it is billions or trillions of dollars in debt? Based on this overly simplified notion, and flawed research, nations primarily in Europe began cutting spending and taxes several years ago. Some economists (lead by Paul Krugman and Brad Delong) warned that this was the wrong approach based on economic realities, but politicians loved the idea of looking fiscally responsible, and implemented Draconian spending cuts.

After three years we can see tangible results, and they clearly show that austerity policies are an abysmal failure, just as Krugman predicted they would be. As Sally Kohn points out in her opinion piece, The Facts are in:Austerity Politics Doesn’t Work, in countries where austerity policies were implemented, deficits have remained high and unemployment has increased. Unfortunately for the citizens of these countries, their leaders are continuing to beat the dead horse of austerity, too prideful and embarrassed to admit they were wrong, prolonging unnecessary pain and suffering.