Two days of protest rallies at the Michigan Capitol building

Over the past two days, Lansing, Michigan has seen tremendous crowds showing up for protests at the Capitol building. Around 1,100 people showed up on Tuesday for an AARP-sponsored "It's not fair!" rally and, yesterday, about 5,000 flooded the Capitol lawn and occupied the Capitol for two and a half hours after it was closed.

They were there to protest Republican Governor Rick Snyder's draconian new budget and a recently-passed bill that he will soon sign into law that gives him the power to declare financial emergencies in municipalities and appoint an Emergency Financial Manager (EFM). The EFM would have unprecedented powers -- a sort of "Super Czar" -- such as the ability to cancel contracts and even dismiss some or all of the elected officials in the municipality.

The budget he has proposed pays for nearly $2 billion in tax breaks for corporations by eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit (which benefits the working poor), taxing private and public pensions (which hurts the elderly) and cutting school funding (which hurts kids). Successful targeted business tax breaks like for the film industry, redevelopment of "brownfield" sites and for the developing vehicle battery industry are also being eliminated.

My coverage of the Tuesday rally (which I did not attend) can be found HERE.



What follows is a portion of my liveblogging, done from my iPhone, throughout yesterday's rally. It is cross-posted from Eclectablog. A version with larger photos can be seen HERE.

Letter to My Fellow Michiganders

Reposted from From Michael Moore.com

Friends and neighbors,

The call has gone out and I'm asking everyone who can to take Wednesday off and head to the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the cruel and downright frightening legislation currently being jammed down our throats.

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries -- and then ran in the general election as "just a nerd from Ann Arbor" who was a moderate, not an ideologue -- has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I've ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.

Read the rest of the article...

Anti-Snyder/Republican protest rallies scheduled for Michigan this week

This blog entry is cross-posted from the original at Eclectablog.com. Eclectablog is Chris Savage, a Michigan-based blogger covering the progressive liberal scene in Michigan and across the country.

NOTE: Please check back regularly as I will update this post as new information becomes available.

There are two big rallies scheduled in Lansing this week at the Capitol building to protest Governor Rick Snyder's rights-stripping Emergency Financial Manager law and his budget. His budget, as you probably already know, transfers nearly two billion dollars of tax money from poor and elderly Michiganders to corporations in the form of massive tax breaks. These tax breaks are funded by eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit which helps the working poor and by taxing public and private pensions received by retirees. And there will be no citizen's referendum on the ballot regarding these policies because, as I reported last week, there is a $100 appropriation on page 182 of a 183 page bill. Appropriations bills are ineligible for citizen referendums.

First, on Tuesday, the AARP has an "It's Not Fair" rally at the Capitol from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. More information HERE. On Facebook HERE.

MoveOn.org picks up at the Capitol on Tuesday at noon with their "Save the Dream" rally. More information on that HERE.

MoveOn is staging rallies all across the state, in fact. You can find the one nearest you by going to THIS PAGE and entering your zip code.

If you are in the Ann Arbor area and can't make it to the Capitol on Tuesday, there is a local rally happening that day, sponsored by the Ann Arbor Education Association at the Forsythe Middle Schol auditorium starting at 4:30 p.m. For more information and to RSVP, click HERE.

UPDATE: A second MoveOn.org rally is happening in Ann Arbor, this one at 5:30 right downtown at the Federal Plaza/Downtown Library. More details HERE.

On Wednesday, the group Working Michigan, along with the UAW, MoveOn.org and other groups, is sponsoring a "Working Families" rally on Wednesday as well, from noon to 6 p.m. More on that HERE. This is likely to be the biggest rally of the week. The flyer (.pdf file) for the event is HERE. The MoveOn.org "Save the Dream" page for this event is here: HERE.

And, finally, the Michigan Democratic Party has put on online petition up to protest Governor Snyder's odious budget. Click HERE to sign the petition in protest of nearly $2 billion in giveaways to corporations, paid for by Michigan citizens least able to afford it.

I'm just sayin'...