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By RightMichigan.com Posted in alternative energy | Breaking News | Detroit | Michigan | Tax Hikes | unemployment | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Fewer taxes equals more jobs.  It's not rocket science and even the current crop of Democrats in Lansing, the biggest tax hikers in the state's history regularly admit it these days.  Including today.  They just approved tax breaks and credits for a handful of projects the administration proudly claims will "create" 3,900 jobs. (The list of projects and tax breaks is available HERE.)

"Our aggressive economic strategy is generating great results for communities and job-seekers throughout our state, and we will continue to go anywhere and do anything to bring new jobs to Michigan," the Michigan Business Review quotes Jennifer Granholm as saying.

A slightly different but not inconsistent take than the one we're getting out of the Motor City this morning.  Without the immediate sale of the Detroit / Windsor bridge the Dem Mayor's office is threatening that 1,300 city employees will lose their jobs.  

Sort of reminds you of the Governor's old tax hike pronouncements that without immediate increases children would be put on the street and people would die, doesn't it?  But while Granholm was enjoying an exercise in hyperbole it looks like Hizzoner may be serious.  After all, he's got the Gov looking at an arcane system by which he could be fired, he's got a City Council attempting to remove him from office, he's facing eight felony counts that could lead to serious time inside and his mom's getting hammered on TV in her bid to return to Washington DC.  The man needs something big and dramatic to sway opinion.  

Cutting a bloated local bureaucracy might do it.  Then again, it might backfire. The Detroit News reports:

Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams issued a doomsday memo to council staffers and fiscal analysts at a two-hour meeting Tuesday, stating "this transaction is critical if the city wants to balance its budget in the worst financial times facing the city and the state since the Great Depression..."

An interesting admission.  Wonder if they just came to that conclusion...

Adams, who insists the administration has the authority to push through the deal, said he wants to finalize the sale by June 30, the last day of the fiscal year. If not, the layoffs would begin, city officials said.

The city has about 13,000 workers. If the layoffs exclude police officers and firefighters, they would slice the rest of the city's work force by about a quarter.

The memo also said that saving $65 million could be achieved by eliminating 738 cops and firefighters.

That last part is almost certainly a scare tactic.  They're hoping the Council will jump to avoid looking like they're anti-public safety.  Much the same way the left across the state portrays any possible tax cut as an assault on police and fire fighters when it's almost exclusively an attack aimed at overpriced prisoner transportation or inefficiencies in the bureaucracy.  

But Kilpatrick and Adams are missing an obvious third choice.  Just raise taxes again!  It's all the rage.  And we can afford it.  Unless you're one of the 252,000 Michigan moms or dads who has lost a job in the last six years.  

All of us had better grab our wallets though and hold them tight.  If you've checked out any of the newspaper websites this morning you've probably seen the cheery headline about a renewed effort to impose a dime deposit on non carbonated beverage containers.  The thinking is, hey, it'll reduce landfill waste.  And it almost certainly would.  Which is a bad idea on so many levels.  I mean, first things first, wouldn't the move be highly inappropriate what with the recent insistence on the production of alternative energy sources?  Those landfills create a ton (actually, a lot of tons) of methane gas that gets converted into electricity.  Why do the environmentalists suddenly want to destroy the environment by killing alternative energy? (/snark)

The real problems with a fresh bottle deposit are multi-fold.  First, they hit consumers at the grocery check out.  We're already struggling to stretch our dollars to put food on the table.  One can only stretch so far before something breaks.  Second, this hammers the quintessential Michigan small business, the mom and pop grocery store.  Grocers have to pay big cash just to be able to handle returns and they make zero profit in the transaction.  The Ivory Tower reports:

Adding water bottles and other beverages to the deposit law isn't right, said Ed Deeb, president of the Michigan Food and Beverage Association.

"We won't stand for it," he said. "We've had enough of the bottle deposit law. Grocery stores should not be rubbish collectors or recycling centers."

Grocers dislike the existing law because it means many dirty cans and bottles are returned to stores -- sometimes with insects, rodents and chemicals inside, said Linda Grobler, president of the Michigan Grocers Association. Each machine that scans returnables costs $20,000, money the stores can't recoup, she said.

Before I got into politics I managed one of those mom and pop operations.  Actually, it was a pop and pop owned by a couple of brothers.  Fulton Heights Foods.  Good times.  Put myself through college there working from bagger to stocker to cashier and eventually cash office manager.  Seven and a half years, all told.  

Periodically during that time this discussion would start in one Grocers Association meeting or another and the response at FHF was always the same.  `They'd better not or we're out of business.'  We literally had A) zero room to handle the additional crunch of filthy returns and B) zero room or ability to expand.

Add to that the fact that these things are filthy far more often than not and you've got an especially nice recipe for nastiness.  Nothing like handling three garbage bags full of sticky plastic bottles covered in everything from months old backwashed swill to chewing tobacco expectorate and then going to restock the produce isle after a rush on fresh broccoli.  You can wash.  You can use gloves.  You can use that antibacterial hand wash.  But until you've showered for a good twenty minutes with a bar of lava soap there's no way anyone's convincing me that's a healthy combination.

There's a reason only ten states in the country have bottle deposit laws.  Lots of reasons.  Good reasons.  Recycling is an awesome idea.  It'd be pretty groovy if everyone recycled everything.  But we don't need to kill local small businesses by turning them into garbage collection centers to do it.