More than two years after committing over twenty specific, egregious campaign finance violations, freshman Democratic Congressman Mark Schauer is finally being forced to pay the piper.  

Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land announced this week that Schauer has been hit with the largest punishment for campaign finance violations in the history of the state of Michigan!  According to the Lansing State Journal:

The campaign fund of former Democratic state Sen. Mark Schauer of Battle Creek is paying the state $208,250 for improperly donating money to help elect Democrats to the Senate in 2006.

Thus concludes a story we’ve been discussing here on Right Michigan since all the way back in December.  Of 2007.  The Battle Creek Enquirer reported at the time:

Schauer chaired the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and oversaw the Senate Democratic Fund, for which his bombastic chief of staff, Ken Brock, took over as treasurer.

The fund raked in $440,000 above the legal limit of $20,000 per person – which the Dems don’t deny. Twelve senatorial candidate committees did, with Schauer’s as the worst offender at $187,000.

The moolah was instantly pumped into the campaigns of four key candidates, three of whom were trounced anyway.

For state races, this is a staggering chunk of change. The grievance is pretty cut and dried (some might call it money laundering). When seven candidates got wind of the GOP’s secretary of state complaint, they ostensibly demanded a refund. Marky-Mark did not.

Here’s how Schauer’s illegal scheme worked.  The Congressman, then a state legislator decided to go ahead and raise a bunch of illegal campaign cash.  He received illegal money from Democrats including Carl Williams, Alexander Lipsey, Bob Schockman, Gretchen Whitmer, Mickey Switalski, Buzz Thomas, Liz Brater, Mike Prusi, Gilda Jacobs, Glenn Anderson and Mark Slavens and then pitched in $187,000 himself.  Mind you, the limit is $20,000.  

Once the Democrats realized they’d been discovered each of the folks who were still working in the legislature went ahead and asked for refunds.  

Essentially they said “oops, our mistake, don’t punish us for it!”  Prusi, Whitmer, Switalski, Brater, Thomas, Slavens and Jacobs all took their illegal cash back, admitting they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and trying to make things right (well after the fact).

But no such change of heart from Mark Schauer.  When he breaks the law he stands by his criminal activity!  And he stands by his man, too.  Ken Brock, the anti-Semite who’s racist comments drew the ire of everyone in Michigan except Mark Schauer, was the Senator’s treasurer on this particular money laundering operation and signed all of the papers.  

Until this week there was no backing down from either of them.

Still, the settlement with the Secretary of State winds up being a peach of a deal, compared with the penalties that COULD be exacted.  Each violation of this particular statute brings along a penalty of as much as 90 days in jail and / or serious monetary fines.  Schauer admitted to twenty-two violations.
That’s nearly 5 ½ years in jail.  

By comparison, I’d say Congressman Schauer got off pretty easy.  Only time will tell, though, how seriously his constituents frown on an admission from their Representative in DC that he broke the law twenty-two times.
]]> http://www.redstate.com/rightmichigancom/2009/02/25/freshman-congressman-mark-schauer-d-mi-admits-breaking-the-law-22-times-hit-with-record-penalty/ I’m a generous guy. Alas, I’m also chronically cynical. So it takes a concerted effort for me, at times, to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it started in college, working at Fulton Heights Foods where it turned out that everyone who instinct said was going to write a bad check or try to sneak out with steaks tucked under their shirts turned out to be every bit the crook you figured.

Maybe it was all of those group-projects in school… burned too many times after convincing myself the under-achievers the teacher always seemed to assign my squad would actually show up the next day with their share of the work completed.

Heck, it was probably that fourth grade class Christmas party when my “Secret Santa,” Carla Parker, wrapped and gave me used ChapStick (I wish I was making that up) while my friends were opening GI Joes and Transformers. Freaking Carla Parker.

Lets be honest, though… what do raw steak thieves, lazy students and gift-wrapped garbage have on your average politician. Did I mention that I’m a generous guy?

I am, though. Or I try to be. So when Michigan and Congressional Democrats prattle on and on about the need for lobbyist reform, for a new era of ethics and for transparency I want to take them at their word. I trust the Democratic Party about as far as I can log-toss Mark Brewer but individually, I do the best I can.

Still, there comes a time when even the most gracious observer is left scratching his head. How can someone like Michigan’s Senator Debbie Stabenow, for instance, say the things she says and vote the way she votes (remember, this is a woman who voted to create a ”Senate Office of Public Integrity”) and then sit by while the husband who shares her home, and bank account, presumably, rakes in a half-year’s income by working illegally as a lobbyist for a scandal-prone Detroit area developer? And lobbying in favor of a project she made a point of opposing during her last bid for office?

Something just doesn’t sit right. Red flags pop out of every corner of this thing, as much as the bulk of the mainstream media would like to ignore them. Bells and whistles, too. It is obvious that the Senator understood what her husband was doing these past six months, so I’ll ask the obvious question… what would motivate a twice-elected member of the United States Senate to cast aside all of her best rhetoric and surrender her moral high ground?

If it weren’t for a lifetime spent watching Law and Order re-runs I wouldn’t know where to start but the embarrassingly large number of hours spent watching the procedural has taught me one thing about detective work… follow the money.

A quick review of public records tells us that Tom Athen’s boss, developer Jim Papas knows two things; one, how to rake in millions of dollars from Detroit pension funds despite chronic failure and two, how to scribble checks to Democrats. And not tiny ones, either.

According to the Bureau of Elections and the FEC, Papas has given the Democratic Party and her candidates over $240,000 in just over four-years time.

Andy Dillon brought home $2,500 in Papas money. John Kerry’s Victory Fund saw an influx of $25,000. Even freshman Congressman Mark Schauer got in on the act, bringing in $2,300. The big winners, though, are the sort of accounts that can make a difference to a woman like Senator Stabenow.

Papas wrote checks of $10,000 to the Michigan Democratic Party, $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee, another $25K to the Democratic Congressional Committee and a fat $30 Gs to the Senate Democratic Fund.

That’s not chump change.

The number that could best explain Senator Stabenow’s decision to turn a blind eye to the blatant illegality, ethics and lobbyist violations happening right under her nose remains a mystery, though. Just how much Papas money found its way into her bank account while her husband broke the law to support a toxic waste well Stabenow once claimed she opposed?

I’d like to believe the best about people, even Democratic Senators… but the cynic in me says that every Senator has her price. This is one time I hate to be proven right.

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

United States Senators are busy people with demanding schedules.  Its understandable if one of the most powerful members of the most powerful legislative body in the nation doesn’t know where her husband is and what he is doing twenty-four hours of every day.  Still, you’d think better than a half-a-year employed by one of your major campaign donors as an illegally unregistered lobbyist… advocating a project you made a point of running against during your last statewide election… might raise a red flag or two.

That’s the reality Senator Debbie Stabenow has faced for the last six months as her husband, Tom Athens, made bank on the payroll of Democratic mega-donor and alleged lothario Jim Papas.  Unfortunately, despite the unending rhetoric about transparency and ethics in the Dem controlled Congress, the Senator who once voted to establish the Senate Office of Public Integrity chose to turn a blind eye to her husband’s criminal actions, putting him, partisan election interests and the family bank account above Michigan residents and campaign promises.

Meanwhile, voters and taxpayers are left with more questions than answers…

How long has Senator Stabenow known her husband was breaking the law, making a living as an unregistered lobbyist?

How much money did Stabenow and Athens deposit into their family bank account as a result of the illegal lobbying?

Records indicate that Athens publicly lobbied Michigan lawmakers and at least one member of Michigan’s Congressional delegation because he understood they were firmly opposed to green-lighting a hazardous waste well.  There are no records of official lobbying of the Stabenow Senate office.

Is that because Stabenow supports her husband’s efforts to re-open the dump site despite her campaign pledges to the contrary?

According to a weekend report from the Ivory Tower, Athens worked illegally as a lobbyist, putting pressure on officials in the Granholm-Cherry administration, lawmakers, business interests and members of Congress in an effort to get the go-ahead for a reboot of a toxic waste injection well in Romulus.  His boss, Jim Papas, stands to make millions, most immediately from the Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System, a fund which has already lost $33 million on the wells and has now agreed to pay the man $10 million more.

Papas, whose company plans to take over the wells, has collaborated with the Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System in the past. The pension fund previously lost $3 million on Papas’ Atheneum Hotel in downtown Detroit. Confidential memos obtained by the Free Press show Papas hired Athans for political and lobbying efforts to win permits for Papas’ firm, Environmental Geo-Technologies.

Athans met with top state officials as far back as August, including with the deputy director of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Athans also is a vice president at another Papas company, Helicon Holdings.

Papas’ name is not unfamiliar to residents in and around Detroit but he’s not as well known out-state.  His (barely) above-the-table resume filler includes the Motor City’s Greektown Casino, which he helped “build.”  Granted, the man has spent almost as much time in the courtroom as he has on the gaming floor, battling requests for personal protection orders after allegedly assaulting the children of business partners, state investigations into his use of HUD money to build luxury hotels and allegations (plural) of sexual harassment.  Maybe more importantly, according to Department of State and FEC records he’s a six-figure-a-cycle Democratic money man.

His latest project, lobbied for extensively for the better part of a year by Senator Stabenow’s husband, would bring more hazardous waste into the state from Canada.

In 2006 the Senator ran for reelection on a platform that included an elimination of the importation of Canadian garbage.  Her campaign website still reads:

Continue the Fight to Stop the Importation of Canadian Trash

Continue to work with EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt to enforce an existing treaty to stop the importation of Canadian Trash, and restrict the importation of trash through stronger enforcement measures at the Northern Border.

Meanwhile, she and her husband were profiting from efforts to do exactly the opposite.  The Ivory Tower continues:

Athans, working on behalf of Detroit businessman Dimitrios (Jim) Papas, spent months urging public officials to reopen the wells, despite not being registered as a lobbyist in Michigan.  He finally registered Jan. 29…

When approached by the newspaper Stabenow declined to comment, leaving taxpayers, residents and potential criminal investigators with more questions than answers.

Michigan moms and dads deserve answers.  Senator Stabenow should come clean today, explain her relationship with Papas and the role his major campaign contributions to Senate Democrats played in her decision to turn a blind eye to rampant illegality.

If she won’t do it for us on her own, maybe the folks behind the Office of Senate Integrity she voted to create could look into it on our behalf.

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

Today is the big day for the Big 3.  They’ll be back in Washington, DC, hat in hand and corporate jets temporarily mothballed in the hanger back in Detroit.  At least one of the CEO’s will drive a brand new car to the hearings while the others are mum on their modes of transportation, but however they get there, they’ll make sure they’ve got their tin cup in hand.  Because that worked so well last time.

The top execs are all expected to talk, in depth, about major restructurings and even personal pay cuts, surrendering to the anti-corporate frenzy (and probably rightly so, in this instance) after the way the Democrats in Congress scolded them before ignoring their plight this time last month.  Ron Gettelfinger and the United Auto Workers feel no need to curtsey other than to offer generalized statements about a willingness to deal if and only if their guy calls the shots.  The Ivory Tower:

…The UAW told Congress that it’s prepared to make major alterations in its deals with the automakers to help get loans approved, but only as part of broad restructurings that will require oversight by the Obama administration.

The UAW “will make it clear we could be facing the collapse of GM by the end of the year, and Chrysler soon after,” said UAW Legislative Director Alan Reuther. “We continue to believe bankruptcy is not a viable option.”

Of course bankruptcy doesn’t work for the UAW.  Bankruptcy would mean their lavish $73.20 an hour (average) contracts could be opened by the courts and things like the jobs bank, where folks get paid to watch paint peel, might be eliminated.  And speaking of the death of the jobs bank, could that be a part of the plan the Big 3 present to Congress today?  Has the UAW agreed to let that dinosaur go extinct?

The jobs bank, which pays workers for up to two years after a plant closes, has drawn criticism from lawmakers, even as the UAW contends it has been scaled back. A UAW spokesman was not available for comment Monday.

And its behavior like that that gives Michigan a black eye not just in DC but across the industrialized world.  An unwillingness to even discuss the elimination of a program that will give folks an average of $73.20 an hour, full-time for two years that demands zero work is sheer, unadulterated economic lunacy.  And the UAW won’t even comment?  They’ve scaled it back?  Wha?

That baby’s going to be some kind of scaled back after Big Labor and the Democrats in Congress are through scuttling any hopes of a bailout, that’s for sure.  And all just in time for the holidays.  Break out the freaking eggnog.  And heap a little more insult on top of injury.  The Detroit News reports this morning on the growing foreclosure crisis affecting Michigan like few other states and you’re going to love Senate Democrats’ idea for getting out of it:

Nearly 2 percent of all households — a total of 87,210 — were in foreclosure last year, ranking Michigan third in the nation.

The state’s foreclosure rate — the percentage of all loans in foreclosure — has doubled since mid-2006 to 3.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to a Mortgage Bankers Association survey, well above the U.S. rate of 2.75 percent.

So what do Michigan Democrats want to do about the problem?  Senate Democrat Hansen Clarke is calling for legislation that will make foreclosures illegal for two years.  Free room and board for everyone in the state for 730 days.  Because that won’t have any sort of effect on the banks and credit lines and the rest of the economy.  

I mean, seriously people, these are your ideas?  Which Senate Democrat is going to introduce the companion legislation making rainbows mandatory, giving every Michigan child a free pony and demanding all business transactions be performed with gum drops, not dollars?

Its all enough to drive a guy crazy.  Which is happening in spades anyway, apparently, in Flint.  The Flint Journal caught up with psychotherapist Dianne Dailey who is demanding Congress bail out F-town because without their help she’ll have to start working Saturdays.

“Those who still have insurance or a bit of cash are coming to my practice with more panic attacks, depression, fear, confusion and hopelessness than I have ever seen in our area,” said Dailey, who has done family and marital counseling in the Flint area since 1970…

Dailey has launched a personal campaign to get the word to Washington on how crucial the auto industry crisis is to the Flint area. She’s timing it to Tuesday’s due date for Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. to deliver plans to Congress on how they’d use the federal aid to restructure the industry.

But that’s not the best part… the quote of the day… “It is also affecting couples who are fighting more than ever over money. This in turn affects the children.”

Ah, the children.  Should have known this was all about the children.  

I appreciate what Dianne’s doing.  Its got to be tough work being a psychotherawhatsit in Flint, Michigan, getting all of those tough union guys to open up about their childhoods and their repressed anger issues.  Seriously.  Hats off to her.  But a suggestion… if she really wants to help the kids she should spend less time writing letters to the Democrats in Congress who are obviously hostile to her home town and a little more time writing to the Democrats in Lansing.  Kids love free ponies.

There are a couple of approaches for handling a day like today.  The four day weekend is over and it’s back to the grind but the snow continues to fall and it’s tempting to turn on the Christmas carols and move gently into the next holiday season.  Yeah, you’ll go to work, or school, or both and you’ll do what you need to do but you’ll coast a little and with visions of Christmas trees and sleigh rides.  Aww.  Warms the heart.  And good on you if you can pull that off.  

Then again, is that practical?  Can you carol your way through the next twenty-four days until you can manage another four day weekend?  Can you really fake oblivious?  Block out the real world and live in Christmastime daydreams for the next month?  I can’t.  So I took option number two for the Monday after Thanksgiving and I jumped right back into the news this morning.

All things being equal, I’d rather have the sugar plum fairies.  

We’ve got business leaders crying out to the state government for drastically needed relief from a financial crisis very much said state government’s making, we’ve got state officials openly discussing ways they can put job makers out of business and I don’t know what says “happy Monday” quite like the name Monica Conyers.

According to the Detroit News, the Democratic Congressman’s wife and head on the all-Dem Detroit City Council is caught up in another mess, this time suggesting openly that the Detroit Public Library is attempting to extort the council to gain control of river-front property.  See, they currently own a rundown, abandoned building and even though they’ve received cash offers of more than seven times what they paid for it two years ago (in Detroit!!!!) they refuse to sell and would rather raze the thing to the ground than see Conyers friends get their hands on it.

The Detroit Public Library is moving ahead with the demolition of a former storage building in the New Center neighborhood despite a dustup with City Council President Monica Conyers, who asked the library to consider selling it to a campaign donor.

The building, which the library bought in 2001 for $400,000 from the city, had become too run-down to affordably use, and now the organization will either sell the land or target the property for a future expansion project…

They got three bids to purchase the building that included $200,000 from the Farbman Group, $2 million from Metro Development Group Investors of Detroit and $3 million from Eugenio Company LLC of Grosse Pointe Woods.

Upon further investigation, library officials believed they could better market the property once the building was razed, (Library Building Committee head Ed) Thomas said, much like the strategy the city took in knocking down most of Tiger Stadium in hopes of attracting a developer.

Considering the fact that we’re talking about property in Detroit, Michigan, the city more famous than perhaps any other in the United States of America for blighted, burned and abandoned properties, I’m thinking $3 million is an awful good return on a $400,000 investment but, clearly, I’m not a real estate magnate.  If Ed Thomas thinks he can get more than $3 million by burning the thing to the ground and marketing the charred land, well, ok.  

Conyers thinks it smells fishy though and has accused the Public Library of refusing to sell the land until the Council gives them even better property down by the river.  (Get it?  Fishy?  River?  Nevermind.)

Read on…

Consider the options that leaves us with as we examine this situation.  One of two things are true here and they are both so astoundingly stupid they almost defy belief.  What’s even better, they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive… they BOTH might be true.

In Detroit, we either have a City Council President, an elected Democrat and the wife of a long-tenured Democratic Congressman who has finally and completely lost her mind, going so far off the rails that she now sees conspiracy and personal persecution everywhere she looks, including the public library – OR – librarians are legitimately engaging in conspiracy and extortion.  

Its almost like a fever dream.  That can’t really be happening, can it?  That can’t be real.  I must have let the leftovers sit too long on the countertop before refrigerating them, or eaten a bad pepperoni on that pizza last night.  And, friends, it only gets crazier this morning, but let’s set it up with a touch of sanity.  

The Ivory Tower publishes an op-ed piece from David Brandon and Doug Rothwell, the Chairman and President of Detroit Renaissance, a group of major business players who come together to try to bring about renewal in the motor city.  It’s a group of good men who seem to genuinely care about the City and about the state and they’re offering a bit of tough love for the Granholm – Cherry administration and the state legislature.  

Earlier this year, a statewide poll of Michigan voters commissioned by Detroit Renaissance revealed that 77% want to see meaningful reforms and/or spending reduced versus only 6% who are willing to raise taxes. More recently, Detroit Renaissance commissioned a benchmarking study that assessed Michigan’s competitiveness against its peers and found that our cost of doing business is not competitive, due largely to higher-than-average business, personal and local taxes.

Yet we have no ability to correct this problem unless we enact serious reforms.

There are immediate steps the state can take before year’s end to put us back on track. This is not all that needs to be done, but would serve as a good down payment for more serious state reforms that need to occur in 2009.

A few of the reforms they’re suggesting, immediately, include serious Michigan Business Tax relief for job makers, reforms in the Department of Corrections to the tune of $100 million a year and a brand new budgeting and review process based on two year cycles, not one, to help keep elected officials a little more focused on the long-term.  

We are calling on the governor and Legislature to enact reforms now. These measures are a modest step toward restructuring Michigan so that we can improve our competitiveness and restore business confidence in our state as a place to invest. A failure to act will send a message, and it’s a message that won’t encourage economic growth.

So what’s the state going to do?  If the Lansing State Journal is any indication, they’re going to tell Detroit Renaissance to roll up their advice and smoke it, but only if they’ve paid the stamp tax.  

We’ve been inundated with stories lately about how local governments have instructed their police officers to spend less time fighting crime and more time taxing lead feet and now we learn there’s an emphasis coming from Lansing on doing a whole different kind of tax collection.

Every pack of cigarettes sold in Michigan is supposed to be stamped – proof that licensed wholesalers paid the state’s $2-a-pack tax, which is passed along to customers who buy smokes at convenience stores, groceries and other locations.

But because Michigan’s cigarette tax is sixth-highest in the country, smugglers are capitalizing at the expense of the state budget.

Small-time activity involves residents simply driving to Indiana or Ohio, where taxes are up to $1 less per pack. It’s illegal to possess cigarettes in Michigan without a Michigan tax sticker…

Police say putting retailers out of business, if temporarily, could be a powerful tool because tobacco prosecutions result in light sentences and aren’t taken as seriously in a justice system battling violent crime.

Emphasis mine.  ”At the expense of the state budget.”  David Eggert is a really cool guy and all, and bless the Associated Press but is that editorializing in a straight news story that I detect?  Why no sentences about how the $2 a pack stamp tax feeds the state budget “at the expense of consumers’ budgets?”  I know, balance is so passé.  

Sadly, that’s not even the most shocking sentence fragment in that section.  The police are actively talking about putting retailers out of business?!

Hey, I get it… render unto Caesar and all of that.  There’s an onerous tax and there’s an onerous tax.  You can’t just go around breaking the law.  You have to pay your taxes.  But telling the Associated Press that you’re aiming to put job makers out of business is sort of like posting a big “do not enter” sign at the state’s border.  Its openly hostile and the next thing the state knows, those mom and pop business owners who’ve been driving fifteen minutes to the other side of the Indiana border to ensure they can make a living here in Michigan aren’t going to make the return trip on those northbound lanes.  

Course, that’ll only compound the problem.  How would the Associated Press put this… the lighter Michigan traffic will deprive State Troopers of additional ticketing opportunities “at the expense of the state budget.”

If they get bored, though, I hear there’s some funny business they could investigate at the library in Detroit.

A lot of news has focused these past two weeks on Detroit’s “Big 3,” Washington, DC and the space between, literally and figuratively, and with good reason.  There is universal agreement that the autos are in one heck of a mess, that it’s of their own making and that a lot of good, hard working people are going to suffer when whatever comes next finally arrives.

Of course, that’s all been compounded by the fact that the Democrats in Congress took the occasion of our governor’s ill-timed vacation to the Middle East to declare the entire state of Michigan persona non grata at our nation’s capitol.  Gone is Jennifer Granholm from Barack Obama’s economic advisory team and gone too is the dean of the US House of Representatives, Detroit Congressman John Dingell, from his leadership post on the committee most directly tied to the auto industry.  

That move in particular led the Ivory Tower’s Brian Dickerson to ask if the left-coast was intentionally “plotting Michigan’s ruin.”

Read on…

The same day the House Democrats voted to unhorse Dingell, the mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose held a news conference to unveil plans for a $1-billion network of electric car charging stations in the San Francisco Bay area.

Within hours, several alert Free Press readers e-mailed me the story, speculating that Waxman’s move on Dingell was part of a larger California conspiracy to displace Detroit as America’s Motor City.

Well, duh.

I can’t believe I’m going to type this, but… Dickerson’s position is right.  Fifty states make fifty places for economic experimentation, competition and knife sharpening.  Michigan has been the home of the auto industry for the last one-hundred years and California Democrats are pouncing on their chance to claim their own slice of the pie.  Michigan Democrats are too week-kneed and ineffectual to stop them.  

Our governor leaves the country while the Big 3 arrive in DC, hat in hand, our Senate Democrats have proven over the last eight years to be two of the most irrelevant, ineffectual members of their majority caucus and Michigan’s Congressional Democrats can’t even keep their committee assignments.  

Meanwhile, back at home, the Democrats running the show in Detroit and Lansing prove time and time again that they’re worth little more than a punch line or a slap to the forehead.  We expect anyone to take us seriously when these or the folks we keep electing in the Motor City?

If you haven’t followed the travails of the current Mayor and candidate Nick Hood the third, they’ve had some campaign finance violations that could, legally, prevent them from even appearing on the Mayoral ballot early next year.  It’s a big mess that was expected to be sorted out today.  A couple of problems, though.  The Detroit News reports:

Two of three officials set to decide today whether Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr. will remain on the Feb. 24 ballot have failed to file timely late-contribution reports — the same issue that could end his candidacy.

City Clerk Janice Winfrey, who chairs the city’s Elections Commission, hasn’t paid $4,000 in fines assessed in 2006. Council President Monica Conyers has not been assessed fines by the Wayne County clerk for late contribution report violations that date to her 2005 campaign.

Oops.

This has folks calling on Winfrey and Conyers to recuse themselves ahead of today’s decision and I’m inclined to think Winfrey might at least consider the notion.  Conyers?  To quote Ozzie Guillen, “pfshhh, please.”

The mayors of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose are announcing billion dollar investment plans to make California THE global player in the automobile industry and here in Detroit we can scarcely find a single public official without the sort of legal problems that could cost them their jobs.  One state is refining it’s game and bettering it’s climate.  Here at home, well, Jennifer Granholm just got back from her overseas sight-seeing tour… so that’s something, right?

And the Lansing she returned to looks suspiciously like the Lansing she left behind.  The lame duck legislature can’t even manage to keep their pre-election promises.  The Lansing State Journal reports that those lifetime health care benefits the Democrats in the House were so eager to kill, the issue that Robert Dean trumpeted here in the 75th House District in every piece of literature he ever mailed his constituents, nothing’s been done and nothing’s going to be.  Andy Dillon is content to let the issue disappear during lame duck, requiring it to be resubmitted in January, if at all.

Under current law, former lawmakers can tap into the health insurance once they turn 55. During heated budget discussions last year over government reforms, lawmakers said the generous health care benefit should be adjusted to be less costly to taxpayers.

The House and Senate overwhelmingly voted last December to make lawmakers work longer before having most of their health care premiums picked up by taxpayers. Neither chamber passed the same version, however, so the old system remains in place. And lawmakers seem content to let the issue die rather than deal with it when they return in early December.

Here’s the rub, and a detail the LSJ conveniently omitted from their report… the House bill, Bob Dean’s bill, makes one particular exception in this benefit-right-sizing.  It doesn’t include him or any of the other current first-termers.  They made sure to kill life-time benefits for the young pups coming to town in later years, but they protected every last dollar they were planning to take home themselves.  

Selfless of them, right?  Now that a new freshman class of Democrats is about to hit the Capitol City I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess on the over-under that theyl correct that intentional oversight, assuming they bother to resubmit the legislation to begin with.

When Democrats in Detroit don’t take the law seriously and Democrats in Lansing don’t take the taxpayers seriously is it really any wonder the Democrats in DC don’t take Michigan seriously either?

If this doesn’t prompt Capital Hill Democrats to get off their duffs and accept the administration’s offer to bail out the Big 3 with a $25 billion taxpayer funded loan I don’t know what will.  The patron saint of raunch was in the Motor City last night to deliver a rare Michigan concert and darn it all if she didn’t have a hard time finding anyone to bother showing up to ogle her.  Madonna, a Michigan native but one who abandoned her home state and then her country long ago, has never been shy about sharing her political opinions.  They usually start with an F-bomb which is then followed by the name of whichever conservative has dared raise her considerable dander.  Eff George W. Bush.  Eff Dick Cheney.  Eff Sarah Palin.  You get the idea.

When the ex-pat Material Girl isn’t lecturing American voters on politics all the way from her home in London she’s in Africa orchestrating high profile adoptions for her team of nannies, globe trotting with Alex Rodriguez (he has the heart of a poet, apparently) or, as it turns out, begging the few Detroiters who bothered to turn out for their adulation and approval.  

I know that I, for one, am really sorry I missed it.

Read on…

The Ivory Tower reports:

The homegrown hall of famer, tight and sinewy, was an onstage dynamo, whirling and gyrating her way through the biggest concert spectacle Detroit will see this year.

From an elevated throne — where she perched spread-eagled in a fringed black leotard — Madonna kicked into “Candy Shop” to launch an energetic, edge-of-risqué set that belied her 50 years.

She didn’t acknowledge her homecoming until midway through, when she clicked her heels a la Dorothy and uttered, “There’s no place like home.” Later, she paid tribute to Detroiters’ storied toughness, and wryly prodded the audience to clap along: “I don’t come here very often, so please make a big deal about it.”

If turnout for this concert was any indication it may be another seven years before her Madge-esty (har) graces us with her presence again.

Unlike most of the dates on this tour — and Madonna’s previous stops in Michigan — the show wasn’t a sellout. If anything is a bellwether of tough times in Detroit, this was it. Fans elsewhere might still splurge $165-plus on good seats, but ticket brokers Tuesday afternoon were discounting Ford Field tickets by up to $100. And this in a city once known as a can’t-miss concert market, for acts small and large.

Notice, though, that she wasn’t giving her tickets away.  She had thousands of extras and didn’t bother to redistribute them to Detroiters who didn’t have any.  Tisk.

The Tower reports about 30,000 people showed up to see the 50 year old prance around various set pieces.  If you aren’t familiar with Ford Field, that number isn’t so hot.  The building’s capacity for football games, and this show was set up on the football field without a lot of conversion, is 65,000.  (When they really have a hot ticket they can cram as many as 78,000 into seats with their basketball style configuration).  Those numbers don’t include standing room or seating set up on the field itself.

In other words, nobody showed.  The place was significantly less than half full.  Clearly a result of Michigan’s dour economy and Democrats continuing refusal to do anything about it in Congress.  Not that DC Dems get all the blame.  There’s plenty to go around on the home front, too, and the UAW is fighting tooth and nail to make sure none of it falls at their feet.  Apparently those $73.20 an hour union jobs aren’t abnormal at all.  (Where can I sign up for one of those, by the way?)

Thank heavens others disagree with Ron Gettelfinger and company.  The Detroit News reports:

The union and management may have to accept further cuts, said John Paul MacDuffie, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “All the claims of past progress are moot at this point, and now it’s a question of responding to the urgency of the crisis.”

(David) Cole (of the Center for Automotive Research) concedes that the UAW may have to give up more benefits, and he singled out the jobs bank, where idled workers collect nearly full pay. People around the country are all aware of the UAW jobs bank, which sets a level of job security that’s unheard of in most sectors.

Or in any other sectors.  Every place else, if there’s no work they start sending out pink slips.  In a perfect utopia there’d be full employment, a Mustang in every garage and a pony in every back yard.  Alas, the world is far from perfect.  Just ask the folks down in Monroe County where yesterday Lay-Z-Boy announced a giant round of cuts to level off manufacturing with demand.  The Associated Press:

The company said it will cut 850 workers, or about 10 percent of its work force, and expects between 15 and 20 dealer-owned stores to close in the next 90 to 120 days.

It won’t be the first round of layoffs for the company, which like other furniture makers has been hit by the housing and credit slump as shoppers pull back from big-ticket items.

How does the Queen of Pop respond to this sort of news?  She tells folks they have to pay $165 to see her from a distance and then lectures the crowd when they don’t make a big enough deal out of her.  The compassionate left.

Not that any of us should be surprised.  Madonna gave up on Michigan a long time ago, but not capitalism and free markets, it seems.  There’s that whole debate about whether art imitates life or life imitates art… I don’t have any answers but I’ll tell you one thing, the woman’s looking more and more like Eva Peron.  Talks a good game about altruism and the “little guy,” lots of bread and circuses, but careful about pulling back the curtain.

Rollin on in, Rollin on in
Rollin on in, Rollin on in
On in

All of the flashy economic headlines in the state have to do with the will-they / won’t-they swirling around Capitol Hill Democrats as they consider whether or not to bail out the Big 3, but with Jennifer Granholm’s decision yesterday to take a break from her vacation tour of the Holy Land to tell President Bush that Michigan doesn’t want the $25 billion he’s already offered our ailing industry, and with Democrat leadership on the Hill moving slower than a snail towards any sort of resolution, let’s take a minute to look around the state and see what else is happening.

And where better, or worse, to start than back in and around the motor city where government run health care just killed 500 Michigan jobs.  You read that right.  The Oakland Business Review reports that Beaumont Hospitals just announced 500 job cuts in the high flying field of health care.  So much for those “jobs of tomorrow.”

The Royal Oak-based health system, on pace to post a full-year operating loss for what Matzick said was the first time in his 40-year career, is targeting the moves toward making a $60 million improvement in its financial position. Beaumont lost $16 million during the third quarter and expects to lose $22 million by year’s end.

No, it’s not because Detroiters are suddenly healthier.  Quite the opposite… Detroiters, many without jobs, continue to get sick and to depend on the government to provide their health care.  

The biggest factors driving the hospital’s deteriorating finances, Matzick said, include a shift toward more patients who rely upon government-funded Medicaid or Medicare insurance plans, which pay less than commercial plans. Beaumont has seen a drop of 1.5 percent in 2008 in the mixture of commercial insurance coverage by patients, Matzick said.

Chalk this one up to the perils of unintended consequences and let’s hope they’re paying attention in Lansing and DC where every move under the sun over the next four years of Democratic control is expected by most to move us quickly and firmly towards entirely nationalized health care.  Listen closely, my Democratic friends… if you take over the administration of health care you are going to kill Michigan jobs.

Read on…

Do you WANT to kill Michigan jobs?  Then why are you talking about nationalized health care?  Focus on creating an environment where businesses can thrive, create Michigan jobs and provide health care for their new employees.  Think about it… new jobs are new jobs and the insurance they provide will prevent hospitals from laying off other folks which necessarily keeps even MORE people on private health insurance.  It’s the proverbial WIN-WIN-WIN.

Just don’t expect any accounts of that particular calculus in your local Michigan newspaper, and not only because of the liberal, anti-business bias of most newsrooms or the old “bleeds it leads” axiom.  Because, rather, a host of Michigan newspapers are, themselves, suddenly caught up in the unpleasantness of job cuts.  The Detroit News reports:

According to the Grand Rapids Press, the BoothMichigan daily papers will lay off workers and eliminate jobs by establishing one copy desk and ad production location to serve all eight papers.

The group is owned by privately held Advance Publications in Staten Island, N.Y., which would not comment on the cuts.

Wait, a New York company owns Michigan newspapers?  Where is the outcry about “exporting Michigan jobs?”  Or, well, exporting ownership?  And why haven’t we heard about it in our New York owned newspapers?

At least the buck stops SOMEWHERE in that particular industry.  Bucks don’t seem to stop anywhere in one of the biggest industries in the motor city, and one that has nothing to do with automobiles.  The Ivory Tower reports that the City of Detroit itself is facing another massive budget crunch as we approach the end of the year.  How does $200 million grab you?

The report, dated Oct. 23 and placed on the council’s Web site Friday, paints a dire picture of the city’s finances, one that’s much worse than when former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the council agreed on a 2008-09 fiscal spending plan in May that had a deficit of $78 million.

As the city has caught up on the audits of the 2005-06 and 2006-07 fiscal years, the first of which was 14 months late and the second, 11 months late, the new information gleaned from the audits has caused the deficit to grow, Fiscal Analyst Irvin Corley Jr. said.

Shoddy reporting procedures mixed with an administration more interested in forbidden trysts than the work of the people and a population base that continues to flee to city in record numbers whenever possible winds up making one heck of an ugly mess, doesn’t it?

Only gets more disappointing when you remember that this budget is entirely separate from the Detroit Public Schools, so even if the Superintendent stopped using two full-time police officers to tote her bags from car to office and back again it wouldn’t even make a dent in this particular hole.  Maybe we can export THIS leadership team to New York?

More tickets.  That’s the answer to the Big 3′s financial problems.  If you missed it late yesterday, Ron Gettelfinger, the man pulling the strings for Big Labor as they attempt to extort another $25 billion from Congress said the problem with Detroit’s autos isn’t that their employees make, on average, about $45 an hour (all in) more than the average Michigan / American worker, it’s that the “economy” is in rough shape.  

Now if I could only put my finger on the why… but I digress… back to tickets.  The Detroit News managed to get some law enforcement folks on the record admitting what we’ve known for approximately forever… those speed traps and big dollar tickets for petty infractions aren’t about safe streets, they’re about making bank.  

“When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement,” Utica Police Chief Michael Reaves said. “But if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. That’s just the reality nowadays.”

A Detroit News analysis of court and police records from 2002-07 shows many Metro Detroit police departments have drastically increased the number of moving violations issued in what some people say is an effort to offset budget shortfalls caused by the sluggish economy.

Complain all you’d like, but rules are rules and these fees are, technically, avoidable.  Admittedly, it gets difficult when you get a big dollar “5 mph over” citation because your cruise control wasn’t precise enough and you were clocked doing 71 in a 70.  And it’s even tougher when a Lansing officer cites you for speeding because when she passed you driving the other way she noticed your brake lights flashed for a second.  Oh, and then there’s the “failure to stop” when you’re the 7th car in a 9 car pile-up and your dream car has already been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble.   …Rassa-frassa-stupid-frassa… I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

Oh, right, saving the economy through creative law enforcement.

Read on…

Course, saving the Big 3 would take a LOT of tickets, though it might be their only option.  It’s becoming more and more apparent that Big Labor’s lap dogs in Congress aren’t going to get the job done, despite an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate.  The Associated Press reports:

Hardline opponents of an auto industry bailout branded the industry a “dinosaur” whose “day of reckoning” is near, while Democrats pledged Sunday to do their best to get Detroit a slice of the $700 billion Wall Street rescue in this week’s lame-duck session of Congress.

…Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky questioned whether there was sufficient Democratic support for an auto bailout in a statement released Sunday.

“The silence from the Democrat rank and file on this matter has been deafening,” McConnell said.

That first sentence is a trip.  ”Hardline opponents” v. “Democrats.”  I guess the implication is that Republicans are mean and ornery and only drive Audis.  What the AP can’t be bothered to mention is that the Big 3′s biggest defender has for years been a certain Congressional Democrat from Michigan whose chairmanship is under attack from the California Dems who run the show in Washington, DC.  The Dems control Congress, the Dems hold the keys to getting anything and everything done and the Dems are trying to sweep from power the one Democrat who has for years tried to protect Detroit.  But forget about all of that, it doesn’t fit that hallowed media template… hardliners opponents v benevolent Democrats.  Who seem to have “Epic Fail!” written across their foreheads.

Heck, President Bush and the White House have even offered the Big 3 $25 billion to address their cash crunch!  Congress approved the exact same amount of cash earlier this cycle to help the autos greenify (that isn’t a word but it should be) and the Republican administration offered to switch around the funding provisions so they could use it to save their companies.  Tough to greenify if you don’t exist, right?  Alas, the same Democrats who refuse to bail out the Big 3 with new cash also refuse to reallocate existing cash.

Maybe they’re hoping for a few extra speed traps too.  Oh, and if they are, they should check in with the Detroit Public School system.  Turns out they’ve got two full-time (and overtime) police officers running around town and carrying bags for the superintendent.  I know, Democrats in Detroit wasting taxpayer money.  You’re shocked.  According to the Ivory Tower:

The DPS superintendent’s security unit was cut from a 24-hour detail after the end of the state takeover in 2005, but it still appears to be the most extensive in the country. It exceeds that of school leaders in districts four to eleven times larger than DPS such as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, officials in those cities said.

Currently, DPS provides Calloway two officers who — according to documents obtained by the Free Press — receive about $95,000 a year combined in base pay. Those officers also incurred more than 400 hours of overtime, totaling $13,803 during a period of about two months, from July 1 to Sept. 5, records show…

(Previous) officers were reassigned about two months after Calloway’s arrival in July 2007. The transfers were due to personality conflicts and because the cops refused to carry Calloway’s handbag, according to district sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk about her security.

The implication, the new police officers don’t have a problem carrying Madame’s bags.

And to think, they’re toting luggage when they could be manning a radar gun to save the domestic auto industry.  Guess Detroit has no one to blame but itself… oh, and “the economy,” right Ron?

Well that didn’t take long.  The first full week of “lame duck” in the Democrat controlled Michigan House of Representatives and the majority party, emboldened by their big wins on election day, have already approved or set in motion more than a couple of tax hikes and special new spending projects because, obviously, Michigan families have way more money than they know what to do with.

Christmas presents, keeping the heat and the lights on, being able to afford a tire rotation as we get into the slippery season, pfah.  The Democratic Machine runs the show now so your interests will have to take a back seat to their’s.  And boy do they have a lot of them.  Frankly, it’s tough to know where to start.

So I guess we’ll progress along the scope of yesterday’s Dem spending spree.

Read on…

Lansing insider publication Gongwer reports that Democrats running the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee took up a four bill package yesterday morning that would double the licensing fees for construction companies.  They faced stiff Republican opposition:

In addition to concerns that the fee would further depress the building trades, some Republicans also raised concerns that the fee increases would not make up the expected gap in the program’s revenue.  Revised analysis showed the changes would bring in $180,700 for the current fiscal year and $726,400 in FY 2009-10.

But department officials said the program last fiscal year brought in $7.9 million and spent $10.56 million.  But they also said much of the revenues to the program come from permits, so the licensing and testing fees did not need to make up all of the gap.

Expect the bills to be moved out of committee ASAP.

Next came the Great Lakes and the Environment Committee which defeated Republican opposition (the marvels of the Majority) to approve a package of bills mandating that retailers in border counties install fancy new reverse-vending machines to help regulate bottle returns.  Call it the Inspired by Kramer package.

Remember that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer loads up Newman’s mail truck with thousands of aluminum cans and hits the road for Michigan to make his fortune?  The idea is that there are a lot of out-of-state bottles being brought into Michigan to scalp our one-of-a-kind bottle deposit law.  (Note: This is what happens when your state does something stupid that every other state in the nation agrees is stupid and refuses to do.)

The program, if and when it is approved by the state House as a whole, will cost Michigan taxpayers millions on testing, retrofitting and enforcement and will almost certainly drive dozens of mom and pop businesses straight over the border or out of business entirely.  

Of course, when they build those new stores and gas stations in Indiana and Ohio they won’t be using any of the Michigan construction companies that can’t handle a doubling of their license fees.  They’ll have to use Indiana and Ohio companies.  Does that mean Lansing just outsourced those jobs?  Just asking.

Again, Republicans on this committee, not such big fans.

Hundreds of thousands here, millions there and the worst part is, the House was just getting warmed up as committees adjourned and the chamber met en masse yesterday evening.  Their top spending priority of the night?  A half-billion dollar gift from you to the city of Detroit.  The Detroit News reports:

State House members passed legislation Thursday night that would allow creation of a convention authority to purchase Cobo Center from the city of Detroit and use a combination of bonds and taxes to pay for its expansion and operation.

…Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, who had touted a $585 million expansion plan, called the action “a dramatically important first step.”

…The three bills passed with substantial opposition from Republicans. “The contents of this bill are unacceptable to Oakland and Macomb counties,” said House Republican Leader Craig DeRoche, R-Novi.

$585 million.  Is that all?  Let me go overturn my mattress and see what I can come up with.

I am frustrated and disappointed at all of this new spending and the skyrocketing taxes the House is sending our way, just in time for the holidays.  But I’ll say this… I’m one-hundred percent impressed with how the new land speed record the Democrats set in getting started passing tax hikes once Election Day 2008 was behind them.  They didn’t waste any time, that’s for sure.

And props, by the way, to the Republican minority in these committees and in the House as a whole.  Here’s hoping yesterday was the first step towards some serious brand building.

Talk about the economy and eyes can glaze over.  There are numbers and statistics and projections and data points and bar charts… it’s all very academic.  Except that it isn’t.  The Ivory Tower connects, this morning, with the human side of the Granholm – Cherry economy.

The faces of that economy?  A mom and a dad and their little girl, evicted for the first time in their lives after losing a job and struggling just to find a homeless shelter with an open bed.  And tragically, they’re hardly alone.

On Tuesday, people calling the Royal Oak offices of the South Oakland Shelter (SOS) were told there was one opening in the program, which has 30 beds in sites hosted by local congregations. Nine people, some trying to find space for their children and spouses as well, applied for it.

In September, shelter personnel fielded 848 requests for a space in the 90-day program; 31 got in. Nearly half of SOS’s clients are homeless for the first time, said Kevin Roach, executive director.

The strain on the shelter system spills onto all social services, hammered by falling fortunes in metro Detroit.

Gleaners Community Food Bank, which supplies 400 soup kitchens, shelters and neighborhood food programs is getting requests for 20% to 50% more food from many suburban clients, spokeswoman Anne Weekley said.

In the last three months of 2007, they delivered 7 million pounds of food. This year, in the final quarter, they anticipate delivering 9 million.

If you can read the story surrounding the statistics and look at the pictures of a little girl and an eleven year old boy and their families, forced into homeless shelters, without getting at least a little bit choked up, you aren’t looking hard enough.  

All of the abstracts sort of disappear when you put faces to the numbers.  This is one of the reasons each of us are involved in politics.  These kids are why we’re on blogs at unholy hours of the morning and night, why we argue with our friends and relatives, why we get so worked up come election time.  At the risk of stealing this week’s most popular cliché… “elections have consequences.”  

Read on…

Six years of Democratic leadership in the state of Michigan has led to skyrocketing unemployment, devastating foreclosures and families forced into the streets.  That’s the consequence of 2002.  The consequence of 2004, 2006 and 2008.  And a consequence we’re going to continue to face for the next couple of years.

I’m as human as the next guy.  I understand the desire in the back of all of our minds to point a finger and to say “I told you so” and to simply let the chips fall where they may.  I think it was HL Menken who said that “democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard.”

And when you’re talking about the plural, big picture, faceless concept of “people,” there’s something to that.  But when you’re talking about three year olds living on the streets?  And yet, here we are.  Elections have consequences.

The Associated Press reports this morning, “Failure of auto industry could set off catastrophe.”

Advocates for the nation’s automakers are warning that the collapse of the Big Three — or even just General Motors — could set off a catastrophic chain reaction in the economy, eliminating up to 3 million jobs and depriving governments of more than $150 billion in tax revenue.

Elections have consequences.  And an emboldened Democratic party in Washington DC?  Those consequences could be particularly troubling for Michigan.  This state gained two members of the Dem majority last week Tuesday but somehow we’ve lost clout at the Capital.  According to the Detroit News, Michigan Rep. John Dingell could very well be stripped of his long-time leadership role on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A California Democrat wants his job and Nancy Pelosi seems inclined to help him take it.  Tighter regulation of the Big 3 are expected to follow.  Michigan jobs will be lost but national Democrats seem to have given up on Michigan anyways.  The cycle continues.

Because elections have consequences.  720 days until the next one.  If those aren’t reasons enough to get off your backside THIS WEEKEND to do something, anything to make a difference, well, I’m afraid we’ll all get what’s coming to you.

Morning.  Are you awake?  Are you sitting down?  Are you ready to have an icy cold glass of water splashed in your face?  Ah, well, yes or no, here it comes…

Remember a few years back when there was this really successful business guy running for governor here in the state of Michigan on a platform of job creation and dramatic reforms in the way they do things in Lansing… and how the people of Michigan, in our infinite wisdom, decided Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry were handling the economy juuuust fine?  So much for that.

Michigan’s economy, ranked 49th or 50th in the United States, depending on the month, has been hemorrhaging jobs for the last six years but there’s nothing like a pink slip in your stocking at the holidays.  And we’re not just talking the auto industry here (although they’re back in the news AGAIN today with the third round of fresh job cuts in the last three days… we’ll get there…).

The Grand Rapids Press reports this morning that nearly 1,000 moms and dads in west Michigan are getting some awfully bad news this week.

Zeeland-based Herman Miller on Tuesday said it will cut 400 to 650 jobs through job cuts, layoffs and buyouts — mainly in West Michigan — through January.

Between 200 and 400 hourly workers could be laid off and about 250 white-collar jobs are to be eliminated. Herman Miller has about 4,500 employees in West Michigan.

Grand Rapids-based Steelcase, which employs about 4,700 workers in the area, was to send out announcements today to 300 hourly employees about possible layoffs within 60 days.

I can see the “holiday” card now.

Dear single mom of four,

We’re really sorry about that whole layoff thing during the holidays but you’ve got to understand, it’s hard work keeping Lansing’s budget this big and Big Labor happy.  

Look on the bright side.  Now you can spend more time with your kids during this magical season, and when those bigger utility bills come your way (you’re welcome, coincidentally) you now qualify for their financial assistance programs!

Don’t bother to thank us.  I’m on my way to DC to help the President-elect spread this sort of joy to the rest of the nation and when John Cherry runs for Governor next year he’ll insist he had nothing to do with this at all.

Tootles and Merry Christmas.

Your BFF,

Governor Granholm

Read on…

They wouldn’t be able to print those fast enough.  They’d need 900 for the Grand Rapids area this week alone and that’d qualify as their light work.  Over on the east side of the state we have, for the third consecutive day, news of another sweeping round of jobs cuts.  The Ivory Tower reports:

General Motors Corp. plans to cut at least 3,500 more salaried jobs in the next few months and could be forced to cut even more as it struggles to survive, a leading labor economist said Tuesday….

“It’s going to be a cold holiday season,” said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

But again, in the spirit of optimism and that classic Granholm rah-rah-can-do attitude there’s a flip side to that coin.  With fewer cars being produced there will be fewer cars on the street.  With fewer jobs in the state there will be fewer moms and dads leaving the house in the morning to go to work and driving home after the five o’clock whistle.  Less traffic, less congestion, and if the Michigan Department of Transportation’s latest edict is as bone-headed a move as anyone with two brain-cells thinks it is, at least there’ll be fewer folks risking life and limb on icy, neglected roads.

According to the Detroit News, there are some dramatic cost cutting moves taking place this snowy season.  Might be time to break out the old snow tires, studs and chains.

Under the (MDOT) directive, road commissions would give high priority to freeways, but would limit less traveled secondary roads to a single plowing and salting.

“Basically, it’s an effort to reduce overtime,” said Bill Shreck, MDOT director of communications. “Once we get the roads passable, we don’t want to be paying overtime on roads that aren’t that heavily used, especially considering the rising cost of salt and fuel. We will keep working on freeways until we’re down to bare pavement.”

Oh, well, at least they’ll work on the freeways.  

Just remember, this winter when you ditch your car on a Michigan road that hasn’t been plowed or salted in days you can stay warm until help arrives, daydreaming about Dan Mulhern and his fulltime multi-person staff at the Office of the First Gentleman… or about the fancy new Michigan State Police Headquarters that the Michigan State Police said they didn’t want… or about the bailout your tax dollars provided to an industry that pays its employees, on average, over $40 an hour more than the average Michigan worker overall.  

See?  You even feel warm thinking about it right now.  Warm or hot under the collar… either way.

Barack Obama has been the President-elect for over six days now.  Heck, he’s even got an extra large majority ballooning in the House and the Senate as of last Tuesday’s elections.  His transition team is living and breathing and working out of the White House and he has Jennifer freaking Granholm and David Bonior on his economic advisory panel.  (Remember?  They did a press conference last week to tell us they were on the job?)

So why are things only getting worse?  Seriously, is this the “change we need?”  Sorry… said “change.”  Won’t happen again.  But c’mon now, we were promised that the oceans would recede and global warming would end, and if the snow on the ground yesterday morning was any indication, that’s a promise the Democrats already delivered on in spades.  

Now if they’d stop playing meteorologist and start playing economist it’d be much appreciated because checking the headlines in Michigan these days is like reading the obituaries.  Grab the paper, flip to, oh, the front page, and you can read about another dozen jobs dead here and another hundred there.  Like in Livonia, for instance, where the Detroit News tells us one of the State’s marketing giants just took a swift boot to the teeth.

Shares of Valassis Communications Inc. fell to a record low Monday, as the Livonia-based direct marketing firm cut 100 jobs and reduced its profit forecast after posting a third-quarter loss of $5.2 million last week.

Valassis also was removed from the Standard & Poors MidCap 400 index at the close of trading Monday, a move announced by S&P after the company’s market value dropped to $90 million late last week, putting it dead last in the ranking of 400 mid-sized firms.

Dead last sounds rotten but let’s not forget, this is a Livonia, Michigan based company.  They’re used to competing in a global economy from a position of weakness and economic stagnation.  Dead last is something we’re all too painfully familiar with here in the Granholm – Cherry economy.  But isn’t that why the President-elect nabbed our Governor for his fancy little economic team?

No, no, no, that’s right, she’s just there as a tip of the cap to the Big 3.  That’s the national Democrats’ way of telling the domestic automakers that things’ll be OK because the big government liberals are on the job.  Someone might want to give those silly manufacturers a wake up call though because if today’s headlines are any indication, General Motors didn’t get the message.  The Associated Press reports they’re announcing another couple thousand jobs are going the way of the internal combustion engine in Al Gore’s utopia.

Read on…

The 1,900 additional layoffs will come in the first quarter of next year at parts stamping, engine and transmission factories in North America as GM cuts expenses to deal with a worsening cash crisis.

Spokesman Tony Sapienza said the cuts are in addition to 3,600 factory layoffs announced on Friday, bringing the total announced in the past week to 5,500.

Remember the good old days when the Big 3 would wait a week before they realized they’d low-balled their lay-off estimates and made another round of cuts?  Now they’re waiting ONE BUSINESS DAY?

That’s the trouble General Motors finds itself in, despite six years of Granholm – Cherry economic leadership here in Michigan.  But the woman is going to go to Washington, DC with Barack Obama and we’re supposed to expect results?

We GOT results.  THESE are the results:

GM lays off 5,500.

Jennifer Granholm is named to President-elect Barack Obama’s economic recovery team.

The NEXT DAY GM responds by laying off 1,900 more.  That’s what I call being effective.  

But, and this is a Sir-Mix-a-Lot sized but, not everyone in the state is as down on the prospects for a turnaround with the Gov working out of the White House.  The Ivory Tower reports that four mayors from metro-Detroit see their chance and they’re going for it, hoping to play on the advisory teams’ parochial interests to snare $100 million in federal bailout money to clean up closed auto plants in their cities.

The proposal calls for giving eligible cities the equivalent of 20% of the assessed valuation of a plant that closes. For example, if a facility and property is assessed at $20 million, the city would receive $4 million to be used for land acquisition, site remediation, demolition and development incentives, and other redevelopment costs.

“The concern is, right now, the cities are facing a lot of financial stress — loss from state revenue sharing funds, record number of layoffs, foreclosures. The financial assistance available to the cities has been drastically reduced,” (Warren Mayor Jim) Fouts said. “If there is a merger between Chrysler and GM or one of the automakers close down, we’re going to face an economic tsunami.”

Going to, Mr. Mayor?  

I’m down on (as opposed to down with) the whole bailout scheme as a principle but I can’t fault the mayors on this one.  The feds are talking about giving the Big 3 BILLIONS on top of a $25 billion loan they’ve already green-lit and yet the Big 3 continue to close up shops, talk contraction and show workers the door.  (If you saw Mark Perry’s blog yesterday you might have one clue as to the “why.”)

The good folks in Washington, DC are tossing our money around like it’s going out of style.  One could make the argument that it’d be irresponsible for the mayors NOT to reach their hands into the breeze to snag some of they fluttering green.  

What are the Democrats on Capitol Hill to do?  It’s either give the locals the cash to mask, for a time, the region’s economic devestation or, I don’t know, fix the underlying problems, and with Jennifer Granholm advising on economic policy and Obama set to carry Big Labor’s water we know that’s not going to happen.

This is what we’re up against.

On Sunday morning, amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our President-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful church goers.

They did it with banners, chants, blasphemy, by storming the pulpit, by vandalizing the church facility, by potentially defiling the building with lude, public, sex acts and by intentionally forcing physical confrontations with worshipers.

This didn’t take place in some dystopian, post modern work of fiction and it didn’t take place in San Francisco or Berkley.  This was the scene at a Bible believing church in Lansing, Michigan.  

Read on…

I returned home myself yesterday, from church and an afternoon watching football with the family, to find an email in my inbox from a friend in the Capitol City.  Isn’t surprising to see her name in the inbox as she and I often compare notes on our Sunday services.  

Truth be told, I’ve done my best over the last year to start a friendly little rivalry with her.  My church is better than hers, I insist, and I have been known to tell her why. Hers is superior to mine, she reminds me, and lists the reasons.  (I admit I’m maybe a tad hyper-competitive, but my church really is the best in the world.)  Yesterday’s email began with an understated proclamation; “So church today was exciting…”

On  Sunday, November 9, 2008 Michigan liberals sat peacefully through announcements, worship and prayer for the sick, our nation and our President-elect before staging a coordinated, disgusting and repulsive attack on worshipers and the broader concept of the church itself at Lansing’s Mount Hope Church.

The lefties were a part of a liberal organization known as Bash Back Lansing and their collection of radical blogs, including one of the state’s most widely read “mainstream” progressive blogs (and none which will receive a link on this website) called on “queers and trannies” from across the state and the region to converge on Lansing for what they refer to as an “action.”  While many of the members claim to be anarchists (they drove on roads, ate non-garden grown foods, printed materials on products created by government protected free markets, wore clothing, talk incessantly about “organization,” etc etc etc) their broader goal is stated plainly on one of their lefty blogs.

“I can tell you that we are targeting a well-known anti-queer, anti-choice radical right wing establishment.”

Mount Hope, for the record, is an evangelical, bible believing church whose members provide free 24 hour counseling, prayer lines, catastrophic care for families dealing with medical emergencies, support groups for men, women and children dealing with a wide variety of life’s troubles, crisis intervention, marriage ministries, regular, organized volunteer work in and around the city, missions in dozens of countries across the globe, a construction ministry that has built over 100 churches, schools, orphanages and other projects all over the world and an in-depth prison ministry that reaches out, touches and helps the men and women the rest of society fears the most.  They also teach respect for all human life and the Biblical sanctity of marriage as an institution between one man and one woman.

This is what Michigan liberals label a “radical right wing establishment,” and over 30 of them showed up in force yesterday.  Wearing secret-service style ear pieces and microphones they received the “go” from their ringleader and off they went.  

Prayer had just finished when men and women stood up in pockets across the congregation, on the main floor and in the balcony.  ”Jesus was gay,” they shouted among other profanities and blasphemies as they rushed the stage.  Some forced their way through rows of women and kids to try to hang a profane banner from the balcony while others began tossing fliers into the air.  Two women made their way to the pulpit and began to kiss.

Their other props?  I’ll let them tell you in their own words… from another of their liberal blogs:

“(A) video camera, a megaphone, noise makers, condoms, glitter by the bucket load, confetti, pink fabric…yeh.”

The video camera they put to good use as they attempted to provoke a violent reaction.  The image of the pink-clad folks above is one of theirs, stating in a picture worth more than a thousand words the goals of the Michigan left.  

The “open minded” and “tolerant” liberals ran down the aisles and across the pews, hoping against hope to catch a “right winger” on tape daring to push back (none did).  And just in case their camera missed the target, they had a reporter in tow.  According to a source inside the church yesterday there was a “journalist” from the Lansing City Pulse along for the ride, tipped off about the action and more interested in getting a story than in preventing the vandalism, the violence and anti-Christian hatred being spewed by the lefties.  We’ll see what he files and what his editors see fit to print.

Props were readily on display too, though some of the condoms may have been put to even more nefarious use.

An hour after police and security had collected and removed who they thought were the last of the liberals, a volunteer security person discovered two more, hiding, together, in a public restroom.  While their compatriots engaged in openly violent protest in front of everyone these two snuck away to stage their own protest of sorts, and only by the grace of God did one of the hundreds of kids at the church not happen upon that particular restroom in those moments.

The church’s response?  After things settled down, the blasphemy ended, the lude props removed and the families safe from fear of additional men and women running into and past them the pastor took the stage and led the congregation in one more prayer… not for retribution, or divine justice or a celestial comeuppance (that’s what I’d have prayed for) but instead that the troubled individuals who’d just defiled the Lord’s house, so full of anger and hate, would know Jesus’ love in their lives and God’s peace that exceeds human understanding.

Yesterday morning defined the difference between a church of believers and Michigan liberals.  It also illustrated in shocking, painful detail precisely what we’re up against.

You wanted it, Michigan, you got it.  It took approximately five days for us to learn the amount of the next tax hike Democrats are looking to impose on families already struggling to make ends meet here in the Great Lakes State and it could make the (appropriately) reviled Michigan Business Tax surcharge look like loose change.  Now that I think of it, maybe someone could toss a little loose change into a wishing well because it may well take a little supernatural intervention to stop a 65 member Dem majority in the House from doing whatever they want come January… and what they want, yeah, not so good if you’re a working mom or dad.

The Associated Press reports this morning on the late release of a report detailing the plans of bureaucrats and tax hikers to significantly increased spending on the state’s roads and infrastructure.  The report was due by October 31st, four days before the election, but the panel was stocked with members of the legislature who preferred their names not be associated with demands for giant increases the weekend before voters cast their ballots.

So just how much are we talking, now that they’re finally talking?  Try as much as $950 MILLION.  A year.

The report says Michigan must double its transportation spending and warns that one or two incremental fee increases won’t be enough to meet the need.

“To grow our state, just like anything else, you have to invest in something,” said Rep. Pam Byrnes, a Democrat from Lyndon Township near Chelsea who sits on the task force. “If your driveway crumbles, you need to patch it up or fix it.”

Representative Pam Byrnes, by the way, just won re-election in Michigan’s 52nd House District.  She and her big government compatriots rattled off a variety of tax hiking options that could radically increase the state’s take while dramatically shrinking the wallets and purses of parents across the state.  They might raise the tax on gasoline.  They might increase the sales tax on everything.  They might build toll booths on every freeway and exit ramp.  They might do all of the above.

Read on to find out more about the tax-hikers plans for your paycheck, an emerging employment sector talking Michiganders off the ledge (literally) and another Detroit Democrat who’ll make you yearn for inmate number 200834589.

See, Michigan only gets 92 cents for every dollar we send to Washington, DC, and many of those dollars we only get if we “invest” what they call “matching” funds.  Meaning, for the government in DC to give government in Lansing some of OUR money it requires government in Lansing to take MORE of OUR money.  Neat little racket, right?  And in less than a year Michigan stands to lose nearly $1 BILLION in “matching funds.”  

Byrnes and the other Democrats’ solution?  Raise taxes and never mind the other options.  The whole matching funds scheme isn’t enshrined anywhere in the Constitution.  Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and Mark Schauer and Bart Stupak and Gary Peters could use some of what should be considerable DC clout to change the rules and ensure Michigan doesn’t lose that cash.

On the flip side, if our DC delegation of Democrats refuse to act, the Democrats here at home could pick up the slack.  Money is fungible and all they’d have to do is cut a few fancy government programs and offices (the nearly $300K a year Office of the First Gentleman would be a great place to start and taxpayer funded vacations to places like Israel and Jordan for the First Family would be a nice second) and shift those extra dollars towards meeting the matching funds threshold.

But that doesn’t grow the big government pie, so obviously it wouldn’t work.  Raiding your wallet, that’s the ticket, and in the most regressive ways possible.  Gasoline and sales taxes are the opposite of “progressive.”  They tax the poor and those least able to pay at the exact same rate they tax the wealthy.  The folks at the top, they won’t have any trouble paying an extra few bucks at the pump but that single mom who lives down the hall in your building, or a few houses down the block?  Not going to be as easy on her.  And then they wonder why mental health professionals are in such desperate demand here in Michigan lately.  

The Detroit News this morning has a whole write-up on the effect the Granholm-Cherry economy is having on our sanity.

As Michigan’s economy nosedives along with financial markets worldwide, stress levels are skyrocketing for weary Metro Detroiters and many are struggling to cope — calling crisis hot lines, crowding churches and seeking out counseling. Two crisis lines in Macomb County say calls are up. At least one counseling firm with offices in Troy and Sterling Heights says sessions are up 4 percent over last year. Liquor sales, meanwhile, are up statewide, though state officials say they don’t track why…

“People are struggling,” said Cheryl Alexander, a suicide prevention specialist at the Macomb County Crisis Center. “They’re living on the edge and one little trauma pushes them over…”

Detroiters are more on edge than most. The APA’s “Stress in America Detroit Report” found 84 percent of the 235 Detroiters surveyed cited money as a significant source of stress, compared with 72 percent nationally.

It’s no surprise why. Michigan has lost more than 315,000 manufacturing jobs over the past eight years and its unemployment and foreclosure rates are among the highest in the nation.

Just for the sake of clarity, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics at BLS.gov Michigan has lost over 300,000 jobs since January 2003 alone.  That’s the last five-plus years, not the last eight.  Coincidentally (or not) that’s the same amount of time the Democrats have controlled the state’s economic policy and direction in the persons of Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry.

The end result, the news media is so far past talking to economists and market analysts about how bad things are and how far the economy is yet to fall, they’re well down the road and talking to freaking suicide prevention specialists.  Now THAT is a record Lansing Democrats can be proud of.  Detroit Democrats too, if their field of Mayoral candidates is any indication.  

According to this morning’s Ivory Tower, one of the Dems seeking Detroit’s top spot, Duane Montgomery, has taken a novel approach to his shady past… he’s talking about it and confessing all of his sins.  

…A knife fight in high school in 1982, two possible illegitimate children from two women whose names he may, or may not, recall; two slumlord violations, an assault charge and more…

Montgomery said he heard rumors about two women who didn’t return to school at Michigan State University after the summers of 1986 and 1987.

“This was in college, where I was a little bit more free with my personal life,” said Montgomery, whose Web site said he graduated from MSU with a civil engineering degree in 1988. “There were rumors why they didn’t come back. I never could confirm anything. I didn’t want the voters to be surprised if a love child did pop up.”

Of course, you know what they say about repentance… it requires a change in behavior and a new start going forward.  If Duane wants to convince voters he’s really a changed man he might want to get Lansing and DC on the horn because the say he still owes the state of Michigan and the IRS a total of $34,697.23 in back taxes, and the man just refuses to pay.

That said, I give the guy points for creativity and for the gauntlet he threw down to the other Democrats making a bid for the Manoogian Mansion.  The man’s published his own misdeeds on his own website and asks the others to do the same.  Let the voters see them all, laid bare, and pick the guy with the cleanest conscience… or cleanest criminal record.  Either way.

Barack Obama swept in a host of new Democrats in Michigan on Tuesday and here we are, two days later, and not only has no one walked on water, the local economic news just continues to get worse.

And the Governor’s reaction?  She’s heading to the Holy Land on a quixotic crusade to bring jobs back to Michigan.  The Lansing State Journal reports this morning that she’s on her way to Jordan and Jerusalem and guess what kind of jobs she’s targeting.

Michigan’s governor is heading to the Middle East to recruit high tech, homeland security and alternative energy businesses to the state.

Am I the only one scratching his head over the governor or Michigan’s decision to ask Jordanians for help with American homeland security?  Was the border to Syria blocked?  No one from the Iranian ministry of defense was willing to meet with her?  Hezbollah says they’re all about empowering the people, I’m sure they would have loved a one-on-one.

Alas, it’s only Jordan.  We’ll have to sit back with baited breath, hoping against hope that this taxpayer funded middle eastern vacation expedition produces more jobs than Granholm’s little jaunt earlier this year to Japan.  You remember that one… the trip that yielded ZERO new jobs and ZERO new job promises.  But I hear she brought back some really groovy souvenirs for everyone at MEDC.  So that’s something.

And while the Governor works on her tan, Michigan’s economy continue to crumble.  

One interesting question no one has asked, what have Michigan Democrats done to help the domestic auto industry?  Lots of criticism and clamor about the need to bailout the Big 3 but the Democrats have been in charge in Michigan for six years now.  What have they done?  Because whatever it is (or isn’t), it is clearly NOT working.  

Read on…

The Detroit News offers more bad news this morning, informing readers that Dana Corp, a leading auto parts supplier is closing ten plants and laying of thousands of workers.

Dana says the plant closures, and 5,000 job cuts planned for this year, are part of a push to downsize the company amid a steep drop in demand. Previously, the company said it expected to cut only 3,000 employees.

Jennifer Granholm and Michigan Democrats claim to have plans to fix these things.  Inquiring minds want to know… did they meet with Dana Corp decision makers?  Did they have a sit-down?  A conference call?  What did they do to save those 5,000 jobs?  Did they do anything?

Meanwhile, in the heart of Detroit, Democratic leadership continues to proclaim their own desperate need to be replaced while parents and voters pretend they don’t hear.  The Detroit Public School board, comprised entirely of Democrats, is now facing a $124 million operating deficit.  According to the Ivory Tower:

The board voted 10-1 to approve a consent agreement that allows school officials to retain control of DPS’ finances, but the governor still could appoint a financial manager if the requirements are not met. Failure to approve the agreement would have resulted in the automatic appointment of a state manager…

State treasury officials rejected as “unrealistic” the DPS monthly financial reports for July and August.

Now, DPS will have to meet dozens of deadlines for managing and reporting its financial situation. The deadlines start Nov. 14 when it must turn over an action plan to “address factors which resulted in the school district being designated a high-risk school district.”

One Detroit legislator, Senator Hansen Clarke, is already clamoring to take over the schools and to run them from Lansing, putting every Michigan taxpayer on the hook for the folly of voters and their “public servants” in Detroit.

It’s like the federal bailout of Wall Street.  Someone screws up, the government will sweep in and rescue them with YOUR tax dollars.  

This is the Michigan Democratic leadership model.  Taxpayer funded vacations to foreign countries for their leaders while the foot soldiers screw up locally and their generals in Lansing ask the rest of us to bail them out.  Say what you want about how tough the next two years are going to be… certainly doesn’t look like we’ll want for lefty bungling to talk about.

Right Michigan readers are all pretty smart.  And you’re savvy.  You know how more about this particular campaign cycle than the average bear and the last thing you need to hear this morning is how important these last two days are.

That said, particularly here in Michigan, these last two days couldn’t possibly be more important.  

With the McCain pull out months back and the general pro-Dem feeling that most concede to be coursing through the broader electorate this year we’ve got our backs to the wall and the enemy is closing in fast.  

You’ve seen Aliens, right?  With Michael Beihn and Sigourney Weaver?  Remember the pinultimate battle, where Hicks stands on the desk and lifts the ceiling panel, discovering the horrifying truth that the cruel, evil, titular killing machines were only meters away and “inside the room?”  

The marines’ were trying to protect a little girl and their backs were against the wall.  If that wasn’t bad enough, they had a weasel, Carter Burke, sabotaging them from the inside, looking out for himself, running and all but cutting off their only fall-back option.  So what did they do?  They fought.  All hands were on deck (and on pulse rifles) and they made the enemy pay for every inch, minimizing their own losses and finding a way to survive.

Even Hudson, the iconic coward for most of the film, found his nerve, his voice and the trigger.

That’s us, kids.  In case you’ve missed the constant headlines, the enemy is closing in around us.  We aren’t just protecting Newt, but have instead an entire generation of Michiganders, born and unborn, counting on our grit and determination.  The bad guys are “inside the room” and the stakes couldn’t be higher.   Heck, our fall-back route has even been compromised from the inside.  The Associated Press reports:

“We haven’t heard anything from John McCain in weeks and Obama is still on the air,” said David Dulio, an Oakland University political scientist. “I think that turns into a Democratic advantage down the ballot…”

McCain’s campaign pulled out of Michigan more than a month ago, forcing the Michigan Republican Party and GOP candidates like Rep. Joe Knollenberg to find the manpower to make thousands of phone calls, distribute campaign fliers and overcome the doubters in a state where Democrats are favored.

Knollenberg, who has represented much of Oakland County for 16 years, and Rep. Tim Walberg, a freshman in a traditionally reliable GOP district in southern Michigan, are largely fending for themselves against voter unease over job losses, unhappiness with President Bush and concerns about a financial crisis.

So what’s an activist, a concerned friend, neighbor or parent or a conservative blog reader to do?  Grab those proverbial pulse rifles and make them pay for every inch.  Fight of our lives, because we’re all about to see exactly what uncontested and unchecked Democratic control of the legislative process can do to a state like Michigan.  The Dems in Lansing and even at the County level are gearing up for their favorite time of the year, the “lame duck,” and they couldn’t be readier to take more of your money.  

Read on…

According to the Detroit News:

“This is a critical time in Michigan, and we ought to be at work getting as much done as possible,” said House Majority Floor Leader Steve Tobocman, D-Detroit…

(Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike) Bishop termed removal of the business tax surcharge “the most important thing we can do for businesses in this state.”

It would, he said, “send a solid message” that government is on their side.

Tobocman hopes for resolution of “smaller but vital issues” such as the Cobo expansion financing and ethics reform. “I advocate for a very-active lame duck session,” he added.

The Republicans want to kill business taxes.  The Democrats?  Let’s go through that list and add in the important issue we’ve all but been promised that Tobocman somehow forgot.

Cobo expansion = the suburbs (and maybe the rest of us) are going to pay (via tax dollars) to improve Detroit’s Cobo Hall, one of the ugliest facilities in the nation.  

Ethics reforms= Incumbent protection plans.  The Democrats continue to claim this is their issue and the mainstream media continues to peddle the lies without doing so much as a basic fact check.  Case in point, earlier this cycle there were two competing legislative packages that sought to eliminate lifetime benefits for legislators.  The Republican sponsored legislation would have included incumbents.  The Democrats, sponsored by Representative Robert Dean would have guaranteed he and his associates receive expensive taxpayer funded benefits for the rest of their lives while cutting the legs out from under the legislative class of 2009.

Which of those packages seems more “ethical” to you?  

Earlier in the News article there was mention of Tobocman’s property tax legislation.  By way of reminder, this is the legislation that exempts poor people from paying their delinquent property taxes.  Nice idea and all except that local bonds that pay for things like schools don’t care where they get their money or who pays, they’re going to get it either way.  

Say you have a one-hundred dollar bond.  One-hundred homeowners pay one dollar each.  The Democrats want to exempt fifty homeowners who haven’t paid their property taxes.  Swell.  The local bond is still going to collect one-hundred dollars.  That means the fifty homeowners who actually pay their taxes are now going to be forced, by law, to pay TWICE as much.  A 100% tax hike in this scenario.  Brilliant.  Because responsible tax payers need to have their taxes doubled after that $1.5 billion job killing tax hike the Democrats gave us last year.

Oh, and while we’re talking lame duck and tax hikes, let’s not forget Andy Dillon’s semi-promise of a gas tax hike come November 5th.  Remember, earlier this year he told the Road Builders that raising taxes come lame duck was probably going to happen and the News alludes to the scheme briefly in their side-bar.  

Our loyal readers over in Macomb County are in for a double dose of Democrat tax hike shenanigans come next week.  The Ivory Tower says the lefties on the County Commission, Carey Torrice and all, are looking to spike taxes in a big way as soon as possible.

Democrats said there’s little choice but to raise taxes on all property in the spring by 0.4 mills… If approved, a tax hike would raise about $11 million a year and be the first increase in the county in more than 35 years. Voter approval is not required because the hike falls within the maximum allowable rate in the county.

“A tax increase isn’t out of the question,” Commissioner Robert Mijac, D-Sterling Heights, said. “It would be unpopular to do, but we haven’t raised taxes for a long time. We need to balance the budget.”

Republicans criticized any tax increase, saying commissioners should resort to substantial layoffs, demand an end to a pension plan that allows some employees to retire at the age of 50 and reconsider a decision to keep the county’s money-losing nursing home.

America’s hottest politician has always been able to raise my spirits.  I’m just glad I live in Grand Rapids so she isn’t able to raise my taxes.

This all sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?  Tax hikers and liberals at every turn.  They’re closing in fast and they are consumed with tax lust.  They want your wallet and they’re coming to get it.

But they don’t have it yet.  Our backs are against that wall but we’ve got two days left.  I’m in less of a mood to lay down and quit today than I was last week.  Now let’s move like we’ve got a purpose.

Even the most casual student of history now knows the story of King Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylae, thanks to 300, a pretty brilliant comic book and the film it inspired.  Three-hundred men, standing alone against the Persian horde, battling not just for life and limb but for a way of life and what was, then, the pinnacle of societal freedom.  

They were outnumbered a bajillion to one.  Fighting in the shade because the enemy arrows were so numerous they would, famously, blot out the sun.  One mission and one hope and one focus… strike where they could, hold while possible and buy as much time as they could manage.

History and legend remember those few men as heroes.  I wonder, sometimes, what our biographers might say should we one day warrant a re-telling.  Of course, the trick of that is, you’ve got to do something worth remembering.

We’re about four and a half days away from the close of the polls here in Michigan.  The Persian horde is closing in around us.  Polls are ugly.  There’s little doubt about our broader fate in many races nationally and even in some races here at home but there are still dozens of contests worth fighting for, tooth and nail.  Races and competitions where our collective input can shift the balance and make the difference.  Ultimately it’s a question of perspective.

We’ve all got two choices right now… stare into the belly of that dark, lumbering beast and despair or look inside ourselves and find the strength to fight on for another half a week.  

Somewhere in your neighborhood there’s a race that matters.  Maybe it’s  your state Rep race.  Get involved.  Maybe it’s a city council race.  Go door-to-door.  Maybe it’s a county clerk or a treasurer.  Make the difference.  Or, if you’re looking to play in the big leagues, there are four big races where your help this last weekend and a day could very well determine the outcome.

Read on for ways to get involved down the home stretch.

Tim Walberg v Mark  Schauer

We’ve often called Mark Schauer “the liar” and he keeps proving us right.  Whether it’s pledging to voters in his state Senate district that he would NOT run for Congress and then running for Congress or asking other folks to lie for him, the man’s integrity wouldn’t stretch from here to the next room.

The Adrian Daily Telegram reports this morning that in his latest television advertisement Schauer hired actors and already-employed campaign supporters to claim, on camera, that they are unemployed.

Mark, this is Michigan.  You taxed the heck out of job makers and moms and dads last year.  There are a LOT of unemployed people in your district.  Why not pay THEM to appear in your television commercials since they’re, you know, actually unemployed?

Interestingly, it was a blogger who outed Schauer on the whole scheme.  A blogger who was in the room, on the set and in front of the cameras that day… bragging. Of course he’s since yanked the post from his website, realizing he’d exposed his favorite liberal for the lying skeeze that he is, but it was too late.  We’re onto the whole jig now and there are saved copies of the webpage to prove it.

This race is still neck and neck.  Do you live in or around the 7th Congressional District?  Are you going to volunteer or help the Congressman get one more TV ad up on the air?

Joe Knollenberg v Yoooooouuuuur Lottery Commissioner v Doctor Death

The Ivory Tower even reports this morning that Gary Peters and his people are lying liars and that the truth is not in them.  Rarely has Democratic campaign deceit been better exemplified than in an ad up and running that claims Knollenberg has “one of the worst records on animal cruelty in the country.” (He gets the same “score” from the national humane society as neighboring Congressman John Dingell, a hyper-liberal Democrat.)

How do they back that claim?  Knollenberg didn’t co-sponsor enough special interest legislation.

Seriously?  That amounts to animal cruelty?  Hey, Gary, you haven’t cosponsored ANY animal protection stuff in DC these past few years.  Let me guess, you spend your weekends driving around Mount Pleasant stuffing puppies in plastic bags then dropping them out the window of your moving car?

Still, despite Peters desperation and nut-job hyperbole, this race is close.  Do you care?  Are you in or around the 9th Congressional District?  Are you going to volunteer or help Congressman Knollenberg get one last appeal up on television?

Cliff Taylor v That crazy Democrat no one’s ever heard of

A poll released last night shows Diane Hathaway leading this race with 20% of the vote.  Not BY 20%.  WITH 20%.  There’s a 57 some odd percent who claim still to be undecided.  That’s because this is a non-partisan, down ballot race and no one knows who the heck Diane Hathaway is.  Ask the Democrats.  Even they can’t tell you, as evidenced by their million dollar campaign effort (that Stryker money’s got to be spent on something) they’ve got going that’s EXCLUSIVELY negative.  So negative, and so full of lies (notice a theme developing here?) that TV stations have even refused to air one of their advertisements.

I don’t have to tell anyone reading this blog how important this race is and how devastating a loss would be.  But here we are, with four and a half days to go, and there’s work still to be done.  

This is a statewide race.  No excuses.  This weekend are you going to volunteer to walk your neighborhood or scratch a check to help combat the liberals’ lies?

Mad scientists v babies

Of course there are a couple of ballot proposals floating around out there too and that same poll that shows Hathaway with the support of a staggering 20% of the electorate also shows Prop 2 leading by 2 points.  That’s well within the margin of error but it speaks to the fact that this issue is close.

We’ve discussed it and we’ve dissected it (if the mad scientists will forgive my use of that term) and we’ve put it back together again (something the mad scientists CAN’T do after they kill a living human embryo) and now it’s on each and every one of us to get things done over the weekend.

Are you a church goer?  Have you spoken to your Sunday school class about the issue?  Have you asked your pastor to address it from the pulpit?  (If you’re a Catholic I have every confidence your priest already has.)

Have you walked your neighborhood and talked to your friends and family members and explained the complexities of the issue?  Have you helped them cut through the “bull?”

If you’ve watched any TV this last month you know one thing, whoever MiCause has doing their ads is beating the pants off the opposition’s firm, Joe Slade White (in New York).  Will you help make a little more air time possible?

No excuses.  Time’s running short.  

I’ve often recounted one of my favorite John Elway interviews, where he told his questioner that despite three bad, lopsided, painful Super Bowl losses he most wanted to be remembered as a guy who gave sixty minutes and left everything out on the field.  As a guy who did his part to the best of HIS ability, whatever that ability was.  That hopefully in the end his effort would pay off.

I don’t know about you but I plan on leaving everything out on that field these next four days.  You’re welcome to join me.

Want to scare your neighbors this Halloween?  Dress your kid up like a pink slip or a foreclosure notice.  OK, sure, that might be in bad taste but it’d certainly be topical.

Besides, there’s good news, metro Detroiters!  The Associated Press just spoke with Patrick Anderson at the Anderson Economic Group and they’re revising the job-loss predictions that come along with what now appears to be an almost certain merger between General Motors and Chrysler.  

Reports initially claimed that 40,000 jobs were on the chopping block but new numbers say it’s only 35,000.  Factor in the world-famous union-backed Michigan “automobile job multiplier” and that’s nothing more than a piddly little 168,000 jobs lost.  Bah.  To steal a phrase from Gerard Butler, THIS.  IS.  MICHIGAN!

We lose hundreds of jobs every day.  Thousands every month.  Do the universe and all of her karmic forces really think 168,000 more Michigan jobs down the toilet will have any effect on us?  

Shoot, I’ll go ahead and make a bold prediction…

Read on…

We’ve had Democrats running this show for years.  Six years in the Governor’s office.  It’s been eight years now since we last had a Republican in the United States Senate.  The Dems control the House of Representatives and a Republican hasn’t sniffed elected office in the Motor City itself for a generation.  All of that power and all of that control and all of the promises and pledges and assurances that come with every election cycle and an electorate that is positively buzzing over one word in particular, “CHANGE,” and at least half of the state is going to vote for the status quo.

There’s your definition of insanity, folks.  Heck, not even friends and neighbors and loved ones losing their homes seems to have any effect on the lefty masses, though I suppose that’s not entirely accurate.  Rampant Michigan foreclosures might not affect the way Democrats vote next Tuesday but it’s having a pretty real effect on how they vote this Friday.  The Detroit News reports that parents are voting with their feet, and their minivans and carpools, and are looking to beat a path away from economically troubled neighborhoods this Halloween.  Empty houses might not mean a change in their voting behavior but they sure do put a cramp in trick-or-treating.

In several Metro Detroit neighborhoods battered by home foreclosures, the spookiest thing this Halloween is the dramatic numbers of empty homes and “For Sale” signs. With as many as 63,453 homes now for sale in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston counties — many of them empty — once-well-lighted houses now sit vacant, and some parents say they’ll be seeking greener trick-or-treating pastures elsewhere. Several of those who stay behind are stocking fewer bags of candy.

Venturing to other neighborhoods for better candy is nothing new, but safety concerns now are sending parents to neighborhoods far away from the scatter of dark, empty homes.

“When you go further out, there’s more kids outside,” said Jacquelyn Oliver, a mother of three who lives in the southern end of Southfield. In that area, an estimated one of every 24 homes is in foreclosure this year, according to Oakland County officials.

I’m a positive sort of guy.  One of every 24 homes in foreclosure isn’t a problem, it’s an opportunity.  Congressional Democrats, including Barack Obama and Carl Levin just rammed through this massive bailout of Wall Street, and they’re pumping all of this cash into the banks.  Why not ask for something in return!  Take those empty houses off their hands and give them, free of charge, to the 168,000 workers expected to lose their jobs in this big new auto merger.

What’s that you say?  Crazy?  You can’t give free houses to people?  Why not?  Redistribution of wealth, redistribution of houses, what’s the difference.

OK, I’d better stop.  The REAL scary thing?  We’ve got an entire political party who’d actually take a cue from that exercise in absurdity and might just try to make it happen.  To each according to his need, right Barack?

Detroit’s top Democrat is in the pokey.  Yesterday, former Mayor and convicted felon Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to serve 120 days in the Wayne County Jail.

Sort of puts a whole new spin on what his good friend Barack Obama had to say about him not too long ago.

Now, never let it be said that we’re not fair and balanced here at RightMichigan.com. In the spirit of accuracy, I figured I’d go ahead and provide a transcript of Senator Obama’s comments, updated to reflect today’s new circumstances and geography. Were he to deliver the same toast today, maybe during chow time, in with the general population, it’d actually read something like this.

I want to, uh, I want to first of all acknowledge your great resident of cell 14J-4, inmate number 200834589, who has been on the front lines (applause)… has been on the front lines, uh, doing an outstanding job of, uh, gathering together the leadership at every level in the Wayne County Jail to bring about the kind of renaissance that all of us anticipate for this great prison facility.

And, uh, he is a leader not just here in the Wayne County Jail, not just in the Michigan Department of Corrections but all across the country people look to him.  We know that he is going to be doing astounding things for 120 days to come.

I’m grateful to call him a friend and a colleague and I’m looking forward to, uh, a lengthy collaboration to make sure that the Wayne County Jail does well in the future.

Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, it looks like the Democrats in Detroit still don’t get it.  According to the Ivory Tower:

At the jail, officials took his new mug shot, showing him wearing standard-issue green inmate garb, not the sharp trademark attire he wore to court: dark blue suit, big-knot tie and crisp dress shirt still embroidered with the word “mayor” on the cuffs, even though he resigned in disgrace in September.

“We love you, mayor!” someone in his support group yelled as deputies escorted him out.
“Waitin’ for the comeback!” someone else shouted.

“Quiet please,” deputies retorted. “Quiet!”

Supporters filed 17 letters with (Judge David) Groner, asking the judge for leniency.

The pleas came from union leaders, pastors and businesspeople…

Interesting contrast with disgraced Republican Senator Ted Stevens up in Alaska. Stevens was convicted this week on a handful of felony counts himself.  The response from Republicans nationwide, including his colleague in the United States Senate, John McCain?  RESIGN NOW!  

No word on whether or not Alaskans “done set Stevens up for a comeback.”