Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. It may be officially spring but winter wants to give us one more kick in the butt. Go away, winter! Let’s open this thread. What’s on your mind?
Another day, another poll showing buyer’s remorse for a new Republican Midwestern governor. This week it’s Michigan’s Rick Snyder, who won the governorship by an impressive 18% in November.
Think again. Snyder actually now has the worst numbers of this new trio of GOP Governors, with only 33% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. And despite his overwhelming victory last fall voters now say that if they could do it over they’d pick Virg Bernero over Snyder by a 47-45 margin. Snyder’s current status is definitely emblematic of the adage that the higher you climb the farther you fall.
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Snyder’s ability to win big in a blue state was due to his successfully presenting himself to the voters as a centrist but he’s lost that image with a lot of folks over the last few months. In September we found 46% of voters in the state thought Snyder was ‘about right’ ideologically to only 26% who thought he was ‘too conservative.’ Now those numbers are basically tied with 37% judging him about right and 36% too conservative.
A few specific things are causing Snyder these problems. His signature Emergency Financial Act has been a giant thud with voters in the state. Only 32% of voters support it to 50% in opposition. Democrats are a lot more convinced that it’s a bad thing (71%) than Republicans are that it’s a good thing (53%), and independents split against it by a 45/36 margin as well.
Snyder’s also earned the ire of the voters because of the perception that he’s targeting collective bargaining rights. 59% of folks in Michigan think that public employees should have the right to collective bargaining while only 32% are opposed, and 49% of voters even favor a state constitutional amendment to guarantee collective bargaining rights while 37% are opposed to such a measure. While union households are obviously the most supportive of collective bargaining, nonunion households support it by a 53/39 margin as well so the voters Snyder is antagonizing on this issue go beyond who you might expect.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There will be a referendum on a bill to guarantee collective bargaining rights in 2012. Will this bring out the labor vote?
This next story is just weird. The founder of the “liberty dollar” is facing legal troubles.
After an eight-day trial and less than two hours of deliberation, von NotHaus, the founder and “monetary architect” of a currency known as the Liberty Dollar, was found guilty of making coins resembling and similar to United States coins; of issuing, passing, selling and possessing Liberty Dollar coins; of issuing and passing Liberty Dollar coins intended for use as current money; and of conspiracy against the United States.
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During the raid, about a dozen agents seized nearly two tons of coins that featured the image of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman. They also took about 500 pounds of silver and 40 to 50 ounces of gold, as was paper currency and other metals.
The 2007 raid was a development in a dispute between von NotHaus and the U.S. government. In a federal suit filed in March 2007 in U.S. District Court in Evansville, von NotHaus sought a permanent injunction against the federal government to force it to stop referring to the Liberty Dollar as an illegal currency and to require the removal of a warning from the U.S. Mint’s website stating that use of the Liberty Dollar violates federal law.
The coins had pictures of Ron Paul on them. Doesn’t it seem like there are a lot of really strange Ron Paul fans?