Citizens Group Files Petition To Recall Power-Hungry Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder

By Zaid Jilani

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has been raising the ire of Michiganders across his state recently as he has rammed through his radical agenda. This agenda first consisted ofadvocating for and passing giant corporate tax cuts, continued with stripping many of the state’s public workers of collective bargaining rights with a Wisconsin-style law, then included proposing taxing seniors’ retirement income, and topped off with a possibly unconstitutional power grab that essentially gives him unlimited power to restructure city contracts.

This power grab — which essentially amounts to a form of financial martial law — has begun to manifest itself as Snyder has deployed “emergency financial managers” to cities across the state to unilaterally restructure those city’s financial agreements with their workforce. In Detroit, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced thatevery single teacher in the city would be laid off, with few signs of how many will be re-hired once school starts in the fall. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow covered this unprecedented power grab on her show last night. Watch it:

Now, one group of Michigan citizens that is standing up to Snyder and his radical remaking of his state is filing a petition to recall the governor. The group, called Michigan Citizens United, says the group is opposed to the new financial manager law and opposes Snyder’s tax cuts for businesses and tax increases on working people:

A group called Michigan Citizens United filed a petition seeking the recall of Gov. Rick Snyder with the Washtenaw County clerk’s office this morning. [...]

[Michigan Citizens United spokesman] Kramer said the group opposes the emergency manager law, among other policies of the governor. “We don’t like the tax decrease on corporations or the tax increase on Michigan families,” he said.

A Facebook page set up around the recall effort this week has already garnered 12,000 “Likes.” The group has set up a countdown clock to July 1 — the date that Snyder can legally face a recall election — on a website called FireRickSnyder.org