The Michigan Minimum Wage Rant Michigan voters used the initiative system to bypass public officials who were deemed not responsive to the concerns of a majority of the voters. Were the Court to rule that the question addressed by Michigan voters is too sensitive or complex to be within the grasp of the electorate; or that the policies at issue remain too delicate to be resolved...or that these matters are so arcane that the electorates power must be limited because the people cannot prudently exercise that power even after a full debate, that holding would be an UNPRECEDENTED RESTRICTION ON THE EXERCISE OF A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT HELD NOT JUST BY ONE PERSON BUT BY ALL IN COMMON (emphasis added). It is the right to speak and debate and learn and the, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process. —From the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Schuette v Coalition to Defend Affirmation Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight For Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) et. al, April 22, 2014 Michigan: A Place Where Democracy Goes To Die 2012 was a watershed year for democracy in Michigan. On election night almost two years ago, voters repealed Public Act 4 of 2011, Michigans so-called emergency manager law. Supporters hailed that the right of the people to directly choose how they wished to be governed was alive and well. But their exuberance was soon to be short-lived. Later that year, on a gray winter night during a dark political season, Michigan legislators passed PA 436, a bill that virtually duplicated PA 4 as well as legislation which made the Wolverine State the 24th sovereign to become a right-to-work state, both despite the objections and codifications by the People which had been previously enacted into law and the State Constitution. During the past six months, a populist movement has been spreading and increasing throughout the country to raise the minimum wage, brought on in no small measure through the growing disparity between the haves and the have nots, as highlighted by Mitt Romneys 2012 callous statement about the 49 percent. President Obama even called for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 in his 2014 State of the Union address. As a result, a grass roots coalition entitled Raise Michigan! sought to place an initiative on the ballot asking voters to raise Michigans minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., petition canvassers are due to turn in more than 300,000 signatures requesting the Secretary of State to certify the minimum wage petition to be placed on the ballot in November. However, your legislators knew this day of reckoning was on the horizon. As a result, they have been busy little bees drafting legislation to undercut the potential will of the people and its impact on the lobbyists in Lansing leaning on them. Consequently, Senate Bill 934 of 2014 was created. This bill provides workers with a 75 cent raise beginning on September 1, 2014 and gradually raises Michigans minimum wage to $9.25, but only after four years in 2018. It also denies tipped workers the ability to earn the proposed $10.10 minimum wage called for in the petition drive, instead capping their wages at $3.51 per hour. So Senate Bill 934 of 2014 was rushed through today because—heaven forbid!—Republicans cant afford to raise the ire of the Michigan Restaurant Association and the Michigan Food and Beverage Association, two of the most powerful special interest groups in Lansing. They also certainly cant afford to risk low wage earners—mostly Democrats—coming out to the polls in November and, gasp, voting Democratic. These voters might not actually believe Gov. Snyder and the Republican ticket deserves another four years in office, despite their campaign ads to the contrary. Therefore, SB 934 passed both branches of the Legislature quicker than I can pass gas at White Castle, and was signed into law WITHIN ONE HOUR by Governor Snyder. Even though Raise Michigan! will still submit the petitions tomorrow, the exercise is now moot as the law the petition seeks to replace is now non-existent. Thomas Jefferson once said the people get the government they deserve. But apparently later in life, he realized that sometimes it just wasnt the peoples fault. He later was quoted saying every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. These days in Michigan at least, it seems that the word republic is synonymous with Republican and democratic is a vote to be despised, rather than a form of government. Our state representatives and state senators in the Capitol know better than to listen the voters who sent them to Lansing in the first place, unless they are, of course rich and white, rather than brown and poor. After all, they never asked for our opinion. Just our vote. There. I said it.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 03:51:29 +0000
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