Tag: Partisanship

The Democrats have not liked the EFM law since it had its new dentures installed under the Republican legislature, and Governor Rick Snyder.  Once the realization that bloated contracts might actually be dissolved to preserve solvency for some governments, activists in labor and the donkey party got to work on placing a ballot measure before the voters.  The underlying hope of course, would be to inundate the airwaves with imagery of the starving kids of municipal workers and their uncertain futures.  Riding the guilt train all the way to the election where likely another 7 other ballot initiatives will reside.

But once again, someone forgot to dot an 'I'.

Or at least forgot to check the validity of the petitions used with the canvassing board BEFORE collecting 226,000 signatures.  Perhaps if they had done so, they might be a little more satisfied with the result.  Norm Shinkle, one of the board members, weighed in:

"Outside the meeting room, Shinkle said it was clear that Stand Up for Democracy's petitions did not comply with state law and that the group should have had the documents' format approved by the board before it started collecting signatures.

"None of this would have occurred today if they had their petition approved like almost everyone else does," he said. "The petition was defective." "

Defective.  Big 'D' .. 'efective'.

Its easy it seems, for the Dems to cry foul.  Party lines!  Partisanship! Favoritism! Those rotten Republicans!!!

Yet when one looks at the vote, split as it was along party lines, one should also weigh in the rule of law. And in doing so, see the partisanship FOR BREAKING THE LAW. Or perhaps bending it.  To assume that the Republicans are unfair by rejecting it against the will of the 'other' partisans, is to ignore the fact that the 'other' partisans are asking for an acceptance of the petitions, even illegally.

What about Policy?

Kearsey opines:

"The interesting and at the same time sobering thing about this is how SEIU leaders see their members through a strictly partisan political lens. The space that the union used to gauge the strength of its members' partisan leanings are (Are you sorta Republican, really Republican, or really, really Republican?) could just as easily been used to find out how worried their members are about losing their pensions in a state bankruptcy, or whether or not work rules negotiated by the union made prisons safer or a host of other questions having to do with what MCO members really want their union to do."