By Jim Hoover

Why are these men smiling?

Well, they have reason to smile. They conned voters into electing them governor. From left to right, it is Rick Snyder, governor of Michigan, Rick Scott, governor of Florida, and Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin.

There are other Republican governors, candidates that fooled the people into thinking they are human beings. But these are three peas in a plutocratic pod, two Ricks and a Scott.

All three are cozy with the rich–the corporate rich who directly benefit from what these governors do in office. All three have wasted no time in sticking it to the people, perhaps thinking that the people are stupid, have short memories, and/or enjoy being screwed by their leaders.

The first Rick passed legislation that, among other nefarious things, would restrict unions and establish financial marshal law if the governor declares a financial emergency for any town, and can subsequently appoint a czar to take over, most probably in corporate interest. In other words, he could dissolve a municipality and its duly elected leaders.

There just happens to be corporate interests that could benefit from governor Snyder’s edict, including contributors to The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (MCFPP), a conservative think tank in Michigan. Among its donors are the Koch Brothers, the Walton family (Walmart), and the Prince family (Black Water fame, though some say infamy).

MCFPP has always been a foe of unions, especially public unions, wanting pay freezes and pension reductions. They further revealed their imagined fiat for restricting free speech by issuing an open-records request for any personal emails from faculty member of the 3 largest public universities dealing with debate on Wisconsin’s collective bargaining. The search is for words like “Scott Walker,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” and “Maddow” (the Rachel Maddow Show has covered overreaching of the Republican governors).

Our second Rick, the governor of Florida, issued an executive order to mandate drug testing of state workers quarterly at the state’s expense. The Fourth Amendment has always banned automatic drug testing unless there is probable cause. But never mind, Rick Scott owned a drug-testing company (that is until he transferred the company into his wife’s name).

Supposedly the Florida legislators, the majority being Republicans, are considering legislation to require welfare recipients to take drug tests, requiring them to pay for them. They also issued new currency (shown below), in honor of Rick. Just kidding on the last statement. But you see what I mean.

Then there is Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor. With Wisconsin’s Republican majority in the state legislature, he stripped union powers for most public unions. But it was done without Democrats and with illegal measures, so say the Democrats. In fact, the state court issued a restraining order for the legislation until it can be sorted out.

The only problem is, the Walker administration ignored the court order and proceeded to strip unions in the meantime, withholding these unions of their dues, beginning to lay off teachers, and giving public service contracts to corporate buddies – all provisions in the court-halted legislation.

Needless to say, all three governors are so unpopular now after a few months in office that if they ran against the same opponent today, they would lose. But state laws restrict immediate recall.

I think it is safe to say that the repeated pronouncements of Republican candidates for almost any office are lies, especially when they say they are for a small, “leave-me-alone” government.

Rather it is a big, intrusive, strip-people-of-their-rights government that enriches a few plutocrats that propped up their candidacy. Consider Republicans in the House who are trying to dictate issues for women and stop anti-consumer and anti-pollution laws.

However, in the case of Florida governor, Rick Scott, all largesse seems to be directed toward himself and his own family.

All in all, at least so far, Republicans at the state level are now intimidating Democrats as effectively as the Republicans do at the federal level.

Maybe Democrats at the state level can give some backbone to the Obama Democrats in Washington.