Flint water crisis on Thursday morning, you saw a man who looked as if his brain had not yet caught up to his increasingly dire situation. Snyder still appeared to still be processing the fact that his administration’s decision to enact a cost-saving measure forcing the city to use the hideously polluted Flint River as its sole source of drinking water resulted in high levels of toxic lead poisoning of the residents. Oops.The next time some idiot wearing a Donald Trump t-shirt and a sneer tells you that we need leaders who will run the government more like a business, kindly direct their attention to Snyder. A business executive and CPA with no prior experience serving in government, Snyder was elected in the wave election of 2010 that swept Tea Party conservatives into office at the state and federal level. He immediately set about trying to run the state like it was a division of Gateway, the computer company where he was an executive during the 1990s. He crushed unions and made Michigan a right-to-work state, cutting services, and replacing the business tax with a flat tax while eliminating tax breaks on pensions, thus putting more of the state’s tax burden on the poor and working classes.
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has been embroiled in a scandal that could ruin him. He’s not alone.
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If you caught any of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s press briefing about the Flint water crisis on Thursday morning, you saw a man who looked as if his brain had not yet caught up to his increasingly dire situation. Snyder still appeared to still be processing the fact that his administration’s decision to enact a cost-saving measure forcing the city to use the hideously polluted Flint River as its sole source of drinking water resulted in high levels of toxic lead poisoning of the residents. Oops.
The next time some idiot wearing a Donald Trump t-shirt and a sneer tells you that we need leaders who will run the government more like a business, kindly direct their attention to Snyder. A business executive and CPA with no prior experience serving in government, Snyder was elected in the wave election of 2010 that swept Tea Party conservatives into office at the state and federal level. He immediately set about trying to run the state like it was a division of Gateway, the computer company where he was an executive during the 1990s. He crushed unions and made Michigan a right-to-work state, cutting services, and replacing the business tax with a flat tax while eliminating tax breaks on pensions, thus putting more of the state’s tax burden on the poor and working classes.