Michigan, too: New guv gives $1.8 billion tax break to businesses on backs of poor, seniors

[Faygo Kid]

Don't tell me this isn't coordinated, because all these new GOP governors (including Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder) are doing the same thing. Excerpted from The Detroit News, an outrage:

". . . AARP Michigan President Eric Schneidewind said the budget plan "declares war" on the state's elderly and said he and his 1.4 million members are ready to fight.

State employees, who collectively will be asked to pay $180 million next year through higher health care premiums and other concessions, also felt Snyder did not spread the budget pain evenly, said Ray Holman, legislative liaison for United Auto Workers Local 6000.

Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, said the budget lacked the shared sacrifice Snyder advocated in "right-sizing" the budget.

To pay for the $1.8 billion business tax cut, Snyder took $700million from the middle class through the removal of personal income tax deductions; $900 million from seniors by taxing pensions; and $358 million from poor families through the elimination of the Earned Income Tax Credit, she said.

Deep cuts to funding for municipalities will mean "fewer public safety officers, reduced services out of city hall, (and) reduced ability to fill potholes and salt the roads," said Summer Minnick, director of state affairs for the Michigan Municipal League. "We've gone from revenue sharing to revenue stealing."

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110218/POLITICS02/102180384/Snyder’s-first-Michigan-budget-calls-for-‘shared-sacrifice’

And where will that $1.8 billion end up? Invested in jobs? Or invested in CEO pockets and Wall Street fatcats? If recent experience is any guide, you don't have to ask. Michigan, the new Mississippi.

[ananda]

1. Amazing that anyone still votes Reep.

And yet they do.

[theaocp]

2. It wasn't us in Detroit

it's the rest of the dumbasses in the west and north. Christ. Western Michigan is just as red AS Mississippi and views us in D-Town as a cancer they can just starve of blood (money) until we die and they can have their racist utopia, complete with militias and the like. I wonder how many of those seniors are having buyer's remorse now that they got rid of their hated Granholm. Idiots.

[Shadowflash]

4. So true!

I live in Kalamazoo and places like the lake shore and cities like Grand Rapids are bringing us all down with them.

[vssmith]

5. The west side is home to Eric Prince of blackwater fame

DeVos is from GR

[FreakinDJ]

3. So this is the RATpubliCON plan - Take from the Poor - Give to the Rich

[MasonJar]

6. I also wonder if the seniors in these right wing havens are now a little

bit disconcerted that they have been played. Let's hope so because it might serve us well in two years. Of course my take is that the GOPers always find a way to blame the Dems and the people with their preconceived dislike of Dems believe them against their own best interests.