The opportunity to recall is also part of the democratic process. I think the issue here is that most of the recalls are for individuals who seem to have stepped SO far past the things they said they would do during campaigning that people simply feel lied to and betrayed.

If the Governor, for example, had said up front that he was going to tax pensions, then I would agree that people got what they voted for. Omitting to say something can be the same as lying. At least that's what I teach my children.

Some one has been very busy today lopsiding this unscientific poll. These numbers don't add up. Public Sector Union jobs make up less than 20% of the Michigan population. Don't be fooled, not that many people agree with this recall effort. Don't fall for the game, lets get Michigan back to work with private sector jobs and give the legislation and Governor a chance, don't go back to the failed past eight years that exacerbated this current mess.

@Andy - Not everyone that disagrees with Colbeck's policies are public sector workers! OMGosh - do you really believe that? Teachers/policemen/firemen on one side of the room and everyone else on the other? No. Everyone that has had a child with a great public education will be against him, if they are being true to themselves. Everyone that thinks that policemen that put their lives on the line, do a great job of protecting you - they are against him, too. And firemen, don't get me started. Maybe the people the firemen keep safe saw this poll and thought - wow - this Colbeck dude is against the very people that educate my kids and keep me safe!

Also, sir, do you *really* think, that with more people out of work than ever, a tax break is going to create all these wonderful private sector jobs? Where is the demand for the products they produce? The demand comes from people working! As more people are out of work, more people are worried for their jobs. No one is buying anything because they are afraid for their jobs. Supply/Demand. More supply than demand, price goes down therefore less production. Does no one understand this? The extra tax money will go directly into executive over-compensation! The legislature put no job-creation strings on it!

Mr Brandt - I was more than willing to give this administration a break, but the very second I heard that they wanted to cut public education so their buddies could have for-profit schools, he was finished!

Denise, please don’t make this personal by painting me as not caring about others suffering. I live here too, my budget is reduced, my work budget reduced, we lost 40,000 co-workers so don’t impugn me of not known pain. That is exactly my point. Apparently, some people don’t want to make the same sacrifices and instead want to focus on blaming our Governor and Senator. One major point you are translating in reverse. Demand comes from businesses that create jobs so people buy things based on the stability of their jobs. If it worked the way you say our US economy would be growing fine with nearly $1Trillion that was dumped into it by our Government. But it isn’t is it? A major portion of the stimulus monies where dumped into public sector jobs wasn’t it? How is that working out? It’s not! The current economy continues to suffer through the longest recession on record (fact). PS. Senator Colbeck is on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for State Police and Military Affairs; I think they passed their budgets and didn’t ask for the Senators resignation. Colbeck cares about our Police and our Military and this State! He does not deserve this distraction of a recall while people like him and trying to save this state. This recall is a total waste of time, money and effort. More the same is just wrong.

The 'job creators' are doing pretty well. Many of our businesses are making record profits and yet they are still laying people off, and/or sending jobs overseas. I know of no small company (and I work with many) who is just waiting for a tax cut so they can go out and hire! The last stimulus was successful. I still have my house, what about you?

Sacrificing our schools is simply not an option if you want business to come here or stay here. Do a little research on how businesses plan relocations and how individuals decide where to live. Always in the top 3 is SCHOOLS. One we destroy our schools, we have lost the battle. I'm guessing you don't have children in our public school system right now or you wouldn't be so willing to let them be the ones to suffer while the Governor tries to fix the State. Remember the SCHOOL AID FUND HAD A SURPLUS and it was stolen.

People can recall her if they want. We want to recall Colbeck. It is within our rights to do so.

I don't think anyone anticipated a philosophy that would tax seniors! No one predicted that because no one in their right mind thought that even a Republican would contemplate it!

By all means begin a recall against any other politicians you believe have betrayed the will of the voters. The question is, have their decisions been drastic enough for enough people to think that we cannot wait another X years for the next election? I happen to believe that the drastic cuts to education that are destroying our District's schools are heinous enough that we should try to do something now before it gets worse. And it will get worse.

Why do people come to Northville? It isn't because the town is cute (though it is). It's because of the schools. Once the schools are gone, we will have a pretty landscaped main street and no one who can afford to shop there.

Bryan, I agree up to a point. I am no fan of Obama either. My problem is that Snyder got elected without telling us he planned to cut education funding and literally planned on taking that money and giving it to his corporate cronies with no strings attached. This is something that has been tried and tried and tried and has never, EVER WORKED! Ohio right now is in the process of getting money back from companies because they did have strings attached to their corporate welfare program. Because the promised "new jobs" never materialized! So this is what we are doing with NO STRINGS?

If you will remember, the only reason Colbeck was elected was that Corriveau dropped out at the last minute. He was a very popular state rep, and I am pretty sure he would have been elected as a senator. So Colbeck the tea partier is who got elected. Bryan, do you really feel that the majority of this district believes in the Tea Party mantra? I don't - although the majority is certainly conservative in this area. Remember this district includes Trenton and some other downriver suburbs.

Actually if you look at the data, Charter Schools perform less well than or equal to public schools in the same areas. There is no magic in charter schools. And if school funding makes no difference, why does it take $25k per year (plus donations!) to educate a child at Country Day?

I can guarantee that less money does not make smarter kids. Go into a classroom of 34 eight year-olds and tell me that they can learn as well as they could in a class of 24.

There was a SURPLUS of money in the K-12 fund that was set aside for education, It was stolen and given to businesses as tax cut.

I can't help but find it amusing that not a single conservative made a peep about the soaring deficit under Bush. But that isn't what's under discussion here.

I will tell you where the money should have come from -- the School Aid Fund, which was set aside for K-12 education but was instead taken and used for Higher Ed and for tax cuts to businesses. If we have no money now it's because we just gave businesses a $1.8 billion tax break. That put us $1.8 billion DEEPER into a hole than we were already. We also need to fix the way we fund our schools so that we are able to raise taxes to employ more teachers to bring down class size.

Are you happy with 28 children in Kindergarten classrooms in our district? 32 in 4th grade? Do you think that will attract bright young entrepreneurs to our city? Or rather do you think the bright young entrepreneurs we already have will begin to leave? Even if you don't care about my 4th grader's education, you should care because the #1 reason that economically productive people move around is to live in the best school districts. Continue to underfund the schools and sit back and watch your property prices plummet further.

Dear Mr. Bentley - I see that this poll shows that almost everyone loves Colbeck. Are you aware that when a teacher, after having his pay cut $1200 a month (not to mention other benefit cuts), went in to Colbeck's office to talk with him about the effect his policies had on this teacher and his family? And Colbeck told this teacher "What makes you think your family is SO SPECIAL?"

If this is the type of person that this Senate district deems appropriate to represent us in Lansing, then, sir, the time has come for my family to consider moving.

And, sir, I wonder, how much would it bother us to do a few cuts in Lansing? Such as a part time legislature other states enjoy? That would make me pretty happy, how about you?

Bryan,
The money is certainly not coming from the "trickle down" effect. I've been waiting 30 years to see that happen.

Hello again Mr. Bentley -

Yes, I remember Carter. A wonderful man and horrible president. I also remember Reagan - who increased taxes 10 times? Or was it 11? And ran up our deficit. We were happy because we had such horrible inflation before he became president. At the time I didn't know anything other than the inflation became under control. I didn't know he mortgaged us all to do that. Check out the tax rate for the wealthy under Reagan - I would love to return to those rates now.

The government needs to jump start the economy and once the demand increases and confidence is restored, then the economy takes (more or less) care of itself. At least, that is usually how it's worked in the past.

@Concerned parent, YOU ROCK!

My dear Mr. Bentley - I am repeating word for word what this teacher from the Belleville system told me - his salary was cut 1,200 a month. He is not a starting teacher, however. I would guess he was a little closer to perhaps 20 years. His daughter looked to be between 7-10 so that's about right, I think.

Just to inform you, there is a West Bloomfield teacher that I have become acquainted with that had his 10 year step pay increase taken back retroactively so they could balance their budget. He told me that he owed the district $3000 and they were charging him 6% interest. This summer his internet was cut off, and he was also behind on house payments. You may not believe that teacher's pay has been cut that drastically, but I do believe it.

If you read my comments again, it was never my intention to point the finger at anyone and say "You don't care!" I was making a point, which is almost rhetorical -- even if someone doesn't care about education per se, they should care because of the effect it has on the wider community. I never meant in any way to accuse you of anything, and I apologize if you understood it that way.

I wish every parent were as involved as you in their childrens' education. Many simply have no idea how bad things are, and honestly it's a struggle to understand how our schools are funded, and how to go about raising issues that you may have with the system. Things are quite simply tougher than they have ever been. Year after year, cut after cut until there is literally nothing left to cut except teachers, and so class sizes have soared.

However. I do not lie. I am not lying, and the numbers on Northville's website are clearly much out of date. The numbers I gave were correct. In 6th grade, my new middle schooler has classes of 34 and 37. Three 3rd grade classes were squished into two 4th grade this year and the children can barely move around the desks that are piled without space between them into the room. Call the board of education, the office of instruction or the individual school offices themselves and they will tell you that those numbers are correct.

Mr Bentley, I'm afraid that Concerned Parent is correct. I ran into a friend who's husband is a teacher. His classroom has 32 kids in high school chem. There are labs for 27. Ooops.

That may be the district average. I was just at the Amerman open house on Wednesday night. My child's 5th grade class has 31 students. Last year his class had 32 students. We have two classes at the school that have 34 students. 2 years ago his class had 21 students. A section was dropped and a teacher laid off.

They have laid off teachers, and I understand there are some not called back. Before they settled the contract, I understand that they had an assistant band director scheduled to teach 4 sections of English, and had a high school math teacher ready to start teaching middle school Spanish. I have no idea what open positions are available at this time - I haven't checked. And hopefully these "shuffles" never came to be, I don't know what happened after they settled the contract.

One thing for SURE is that there was an article in the Northville Record with interviews of certain Northville Board Members, who had the nerve to fault the teachers for not being able to bring back the entire staff. Wake up people - it's not their fault. The Governor of this state took the money away. Recall Rick Snyder.

That's the party of a public education that can compete with other countries in the world? The party that actually wants qualified, committed, experienced people in charge of our childrens' education? I don't want to go to the party if it's with underpaid, unqualified people in charge of our children. And if you thought about it for more than a minute, neither would you.

No one who has set foot in a public school in the last 10 years would criticize teachers in this way. If we want a successful public education system then we have to respect and value our educators like they do in Finland, Japan, and in all those countries that have education systems that are beating the cr@p out of ours right now. The reality of the 21st century is that the US will be left behind unless we fix this.

From my personal experience, most teachers really don't think about the "benefits and salaries" because they are more preoccupied and concerned with their daily and often nightly duties keeping up with all that it takes to do the job of teaching children year after year. If you haven't been there, you will never understand.

I would agree that the teachers had a very agreeable benefit package - but not great salaries. Administrators, certainly are very well paid and have perks like car allowances - many of them have doctorate degrees, too. Teachers are not rich people - why do you act as if teachers are getting rich on the public dime? There is no "party" here and there never was - what are you talking about? My guess is that you OR Patrick Colbeck couldn't last 10 minutes in a room of second graders!

I ask myself why teachers are so hated. The only thing I can come up with is that people are jealous of their union representation, and their summers "off". Yes, they have some time off in the summer so they can take the classes they need to stay certified, which they pay for out of their own pockets.

What is with you, Real Life? Teaching is a profession, just like whatever it is you do. Why not have some respect for it? School is a whole lot better now than it was when I was a kid. I have been very impressed with teachers in Northville and their partnerships with parents. Do you have children? Are you part of this system? Or are you just ticked off because some of your taxes pay for the excellent schools we have (had) here? I just want to understand the hate, that's all. I've been dealing with it all summer and I just don't understand.

I'm not sure why you want to argue about facts which are easily to check. The numbers you quoted are LAST year's numbers (look at the dates again). Over the Summer 57 teachers were laid off, 26 brought back, and the class sizes are as I stated. I know because I am in the school, my children are in those classes. Phone the principals if you don't believe me. If you look at who they are hiring you'll see there are no teaching positions open. But arguing seems a little absurd.

Marc didn't like to see me in his little cofffee's with his union friends asking questions about data. In very simple terms. Public employees on average make 20% more in pay and benefits than private and teachers work 8 months of a year to boot. I think teacher and public employees should get pay for performance like the rest of us. Guess they don't want to be accountable. I am done. I pray this recall effort goes that way of the Dodo Bird.

The Center For Media And Democracy? Really? The website oozes with the smell of George Soros money. George Soros is an evil human being. Keep drinking Goerge's & Arrianna's Kool Aid Dahhling....

Bryan, I have no idea about Soros, but if you are unaware of ALEC, I suggest you educate yourself. It has nothing to do with Soros. It has everything to do with business contributions - basically buying legislation, which is then sent to the states for the republican state congress people to tweak and then introduce into their respective committees. This is why all this legislation is being introduced and moving through congress so quickly - you didn't think our reps were actually working hard, did you? It's the businesses, who have successfully bought our state. If you want to know which corporations are involved, say so, and I'll dig up the data for you. Suffice it to say, the BIG corps that pay no taxes, such as GE and Exxon are involved, and if I remember correctly, Amazon. That surprised me until I remembered that they want to keep states from charging sales tax on online purchases. Doesn't look like that worked, though, based on today's introduction. :-)

What the heck you think I have been doing for 30 years Ann? "Real Life" said it perfectly. Time to work and be compensated like rest of us and stop blaming business, the government and the citizens that pay your salaries. This is not a conspiracy by business; this is real grass roots activism shedding light on the realities of what we are dealing with. Quit wasting your time trying to finding someone to blame to make you feel better. The train is coming from the fiscal conservatives of the world. Time for real change based on data; not social change based on emotions. The more you attack each of us as "Know Nothings" and OMG comments only sheds more light as to what is driving this recall of the Gov and Senator, emotion! Not the facts. Attack all you like, you are making our case.