By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org
    
LANSING, Mich. – A group working to recall Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has thrown in the towel, using Gov. Scott Walker’s recall victory in Wisconsin as a convenient excuse to bow out.
    
Bruce Fealk, spokesman for the recall group Michigan Rising, told the Detroit Free Press “it has become abundantly clear that Michigan Rising was not going to accomplish its goal of recalling Gov. Snyder.”
    
Earlier this week, he told the Free Press that despite the help of “thousands of volunteers,” the number of signatures collected was “not anywhere near where we need to be” to meet the 807,000-signature threshold to trigger a recall election.
    
He said Gov. Scott Walker’s decisive victory in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall election Tuesday illustrated the difficulty of ousting a state’s top elected official. 
    
We believe the Wisconsin results simply provide a face-saving excuse for Michigan Rising to stop beating a dead horse. The group first tried and failed to recall Snyder in 2011. No Michigan governor has ever been recalled from office, the Free Press reports.
    
Michigan Rising wanted to recall Snyder over several pieces of union reform legislation, including his emergency financial manager law, which allows state-appointed officials to void labor contracts in school districts with severe financial problems. Michigan Rising members also joined like minded liberal groups in Wisconsin in an attempt to recall Walker over similar union issues.
    
We believe there is a good reason they failed in both states.
    
Taxpayers realize local schools and municipalities can no longer afford the lavish employee benefits they once could. Citizens understand public sector unions, particularly, have abused their collective bargaining privileges by demanding automatic annual raises, free or low-cost health insurance and pensions, five-figure bonuses and other special perks during tough economic times, while at the same time opposing any meaningful improvements to the education system.
    
In Michigan and Wisconsin, residents have watched school leaders being forced to lay off young, award-winning teachers to reserve room for senior employees, simply because union contracts demand that seniority, rather than effectiveness, be the main criteria for personnel decisions.
    
In both states, residents have watched union-affiliated insurance companies monopolize the public school insurance market and drive up costs for school districts.
    
Walker and Snyder have used their power to curb collective bargaining abuses in each state, and citizens obviously appreciate their efforts. That’s why Walker was re-elected Tuesday, and the effort to remove Snyder from office has fizzled to a standstill.
    
The people have obviously had enough of the unions, and they appreciate strong leaders who are finally standing up to them.