Category Archives: Politics

Politics

The Czar of Michigan strikes again….

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Well…I am continually amazed at the governor of this state who espouses limited government and local control and then does what he did yesterday. In an interview in GR yesterday, this idiot tried to explain away his power grab that will take money away from local government unless they do exactly what he says…using blackmail and justifying it with this statement: “the goal here isn’t to punish people,it is to reward the success and crate a new culture based on best practices”…and whose best practices are those and who says they are the best? This, coming from a faith-based party that only believes the numbers they pull out of a hat? This, coming from a former ceo whose only claim to fame was to make hundreds of millions of dollars shipping the entire company of Gateway computers to China? This is his idea of “best practices”? Why aren’t the businesses that he is showering 1.8 billion dollars in tax cuts on being held to this bogus claim of “best practices”? No, they don’t have to do anything to get this transfer of wealth except exist and continue to give money to his and other repub’s campaign.

This is nothing more than a naked power grab that is based upon bludgeoning his enemies with his control of the purse strings and if the localities don’t agree, guess what? He will use the recently passed emergency manager law to remove elected officials and install more of his cronies that will then. without debate, drive their right-wing agenda down our throats. Where are the tea partiers who say they despise the “takeover” by centralized government? What’s next? Rick Snyder becoming the only government that Michigan has, and his pronouncements will become law no matter how misguided they are….we need to rise up and throw these idiots out in the next election before our democracy is gone forever…geez…

Politics

Charter schools…

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Well…don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the Detroit Public Schools, but that district is in danger of failing from flight, falling property values, and mismanagement. The solution that is being sold to Michigan and the people of Detroit is to convert fully half of these schools to privately run charter schools following the repub mantra that the private sector always does thing better than government, but the numbers don’t back that up….that’s never a problem to the repubs anyway….their faith-based system of governance does not rely on numbers or statistics just belief. While some of the charters in Michigan do excel at educating children, on a whole, they perform well below the average in graduation rates, adequate yearly progress, and standardized tests. I will concede that some of the charters take in kids that have failed in other places which will skew the statistics somewhat, but this is small subset of the kids that go to charters both here and across the country. So, what can we divine from these numbers? I don’t want to sound like there is no nuance to this comparison, but one of the biggest reasons that the repubs want charters is that their teachers are overwhelmingly non-union….they care very little about achievement or educating our children…just about scoring political points and furthering their extreme agenda here in Michigan…geez…

Politics

Okay….

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Well…out the bike, I had an idea that ended up being way too depressing…the title was going to be “what happens when your dreams are gone?” but that’s way too depressing even for me..so let’s go another direction. You know I’ve been severely critical of our gov Snyder and his plans to raise taxes on everyone but corporations….and I may have been a little too strident but that reaction comes from my long experience following politics and the fact that since Reagan, there has been a notable bias by the repubs against the middle class. Can a leopard change it’s spots? So, I think I’ll take it easy for a couple of days and try to regain my perspective…and I’ve always said that I don’t mind paying taxes since it is one of the responsibilities of any society; I just don’t like it when corporations get to freeload on the infrastructure you and I pay for. It would be nice to have an I-94 that didn’t destroy you car when you use it and schools that aren’t crumbling. That brings me to the one last thing…when did teachers become the devil? The way the right is foaming at the mouth about them, you would think they stole the candy from the mouths of babies and kicked puppies. I for one, have always looked up to good teachers and I don’t I don’t understand whey they are always considered overpaid when a ceo or hedge fund manager makes a thousand times more than their average. Just a question…don’t expect an answer…

Politics

Revisionist history….

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Well….don’t know how long this one is going to be but had a couple of thoughts that I wanted to get down….the first thing that started me down this path was an article by our ex-senator Spence Abraham the basically said to our gov “keep doing what you’re doing” and ignore that the people of Michigan really don’t want the direction you are going…saying what I’ve been saying for quite a while, that the repubs don’t care what you and I think. But the worst part of the article goes on to revise the history of the previous repub governor Engler; praising him for taking on big government and asserting that the state was in great shape when he left. What strikes me in all of this is the continuation of the same old repub results, ruin the state or nation by your imbecilic policies, then lie about them and claim that it was all good. When Engler left, he left behind a legacy deregulation that prevented people from suing pharmaceutical companies even if they were negligent and their products caused death, and an economy that was fast taking on water from the tax cuts he gave to every business with no strings attached.

So, what have we learned here? Oh, you know, that the repubs will lie, cheat, and steal…it’s in their DNA….geez…

Politics

Didn’t think about this one til now….

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Well…I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for a while but it didn’t take shape until today when in a flash of insight (I do have those, you know) put it all together. I know I was understandably upset and concerned about the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the same rights as individuals and allowed them to spend unlimited money on political campaigns without having to disclose where the money came from, and I have railed against the absurdity of the twisted logic that led to the decision. But, this new idea is the scariest one yet….what happens when a foreign government buys some small American company and then uses it to funnel money to candidates that will vote in direct opposition to the interests of the US? Without the disclosure law that the repubs killed, this has already happened and will continue to be one of the greatest threats to our democracy we have ever seen…much more so than the threat of radical Islam that rep King is so concerned about. The repubs have already sold off most of the country to business…are foreign governments next? Geez….

Politics

Manny’s wrong again….or is that still?

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Well…I know, I promised to not counterpunch much and I’m not sure if this is one, but it kind of seems like it since I have to comment on the misguided rantings of Manny Lopez again…but I think it’s not Manny per se, but the idea of Manny and his repub ilk and their continued reliance on failed policies as a cover for their naked thievery. I know, I said that I was going to be a little more composed here, and I fully understand that Michigan is in bad shape and things need to change to restore it’s solvency. What I disagree with is the way the new gov is going about it along with the assertions from the right that this is what the people voted for. The problem with believing that is not once on the campaign trail, did Snyder or any of the repubs that were elected to the house and senate give any detail of their budget plan that included huge tax breaks for business while raising taxes on you and me. If they would have, the “nerd” would never have been elected, but that is how the repubs operate….lie or conceal until the people are duped, and then ram through their radical right wing agenda while tarring the opposition as “socialists’ or special interests whose only concern is lining their own pockets. I’d rather have the pockets of a working person or retiree lined than give more to the corporate thieves that bought this last election…geez….

Politics

Here’s the reason…

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Well…there has been idea gestating in my head over the past couple of days that is a response to the columnists here in Michigan who are decrying the pushback to gov Snyders budget proposals as just more of the same special interest excesses that have put us in this dire budget crises. But, in this case, I think most of the pundits have it wrong….where workers have done their part over the past twenty years to help make the economy viable by giving back on wages and benefits with the promise of those givebacks being temporary, they have now awoken to the true fact that their sacrifice was just a part of a larger con game being run on them by business and repubs. I also feel that it is past time for them to see that the ‘shared sacrifice” that is espoused by Snyder is a one-sided bargain where business gets everything they want in tax breaks and the restriction of workers rights and the rest of us pay for it. Why should the workers and retirees of this state believe anything these guys say when they have been lied to for the last 20 years?

I contend that this pushback is a logical response to the lies and rigging of the economy that the repubs have foisted on us; and is not equivalent to the naked greed that drives business and their partner cons…the repubs…geez…

Politics

More repub shenanigans…

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Well….it has been a revealing week both here in Michigan and in Wisconsin where the true colors of these thugs have come to light…in Wisconsin, where the repubs have been screaming about the dire fiscal effects that continuing to bargain with the unions has for the state, have used a lying, cheating, manuever to get the union busting bill passed. The only way that they could do it was to separate the two portions of the bill, taking the budget portion of the bill and making it separate….but the only way they could do that was to state that the union bashing part had no fiscal effect on the budget. So, Gov Walker, when were you lying? Were you lying when you said the state would go broke without killing the unions or when you said the union busting bill would have no effect on the finances of the state. These liars will do or say anything to push their far-right agenda no matter what the people of Wisconsin want…I hope you and your thugs like being elected for one term…that’s all you are going to get.

The same kind of lying and manipulating is going on here in Michigan by the repubs that control the government here. To ensure that there will be no voice of the people on the giveaways to business and tax increases on everyone else, the repubs have used a shenanigan that placed a 100 dollar appropriation in the bill which, by Michigan law, takes away the right for the voters of Michigan to vote on the direction of our state and rein in these liars. We are seeing the “nerd” that ran on transparency in government and decried the supposed back room deals that they tried to pin on gov Granholm do even worse; a concerted effort to attack working people and retirees using barely ethical political tactics. What are you afraid of gov Snyder? That once the people see you as just another thief that lied to the electorate to shield your true objective, like Wisconsin, that you will be gone after one term? You should be ashamed…geez….

Politics

Here come the musings….

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Well….was almost worked up into an outrage by ole Nolan in the News this morning but he really has nothing new to say except…nope, nothing new to say, just more of his same old schtick…greedy unions, put upon corporations, and shared sacrifice that is shared by everyone but the rich and those same corporations….I wonder how much he gets paid by those folks to keep spouting that nonsense? It must be really easy to write a column when you are given the talking points every morning…..and no, no one gives me talking points, although, I am repetitive at times and that’s why I’m not going to counterpunch today but just talk about a few things I see going on that need comment. I find it funny that rep King from New York would be holding hearings on Islamic radicalism in the congress right now…especially since he was a huge supporter of terrorist groups that funneled money and guns to the Irish Republican Army that was responsible for thousands of innocent people dying in northern Ireland. I guess it’s okay to support terrorism if it is a group you agree with but not if it is a group you can score political points demonizing. Typical repub thug….

Then, we had Michael Barone from the same right wing rag going after unions again (that’s right, it’s Thursday, attack unions day) and making the assertion that private sector companies that don’t have unions have been successful and their unionized counterparts have failed. Well, yeah, Mike, of course a business that can discard workers, offshore jobs, treat their workers like crap, and buy favorable legislation are going to thrive in your desired business climate….but the contention that unionized companies don’t thrive by sharing with their workers discounts the profits by all of the automobile companies over the last year. I can’t wait until the News gets into financial trouble and the first people to go are their older, more highly compensated columnists…and there won’t be a damn thing ole Mike and his ilk will be able to do about it….

Okay, there was some counterpunching here….but you know how it works here…I never know what I’m going to write until I get doing it….and that’s the fun….I hope for you and me….

Politics

Number 750…..

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Well…this one is kind of a milestone for me and this post…it marks number 750 and I don’t know if I should use it for musings on the past almost year of writing this thing or to go off on gov Snyder again…I am going to have to comment on him and the recent revelations of the detail of his budget, and I do want to comment on what I think the endgame is. So, I’m a little confused right now, but not in a musing mood so I guess I’ll take on Mr. Snyder…again.

If you’ve read anything of the politics here in Michigan, there is a battle going on with the makeup of the next budget with the repubs wanting to give unnecessary tax cuts to business paid for by increases in taxes on everyone else. This, in itself, is enough to show that the repubs don’t give a damn about you and me, but I think there is even a more insidious plan contained in this legislation; one that is being worked this minute in the guise of deficit reduction but whose ultimate aim is to destroy organized labor. I talked briefly about this last week, but the epiphany didn’t come until I was reading about the reductions in revenue sharing to cities and townships that is also included in this bill, and I made the connection to the new bill that would allow to governor to appoint “overseers” to take over municipalities that are in financial distress. Included in this legislation is the ability of the overseers to void union contracts and unilaterally prevent the union members from having any voice. Now…does anyone else see the conflict of interest here with having the governor controlling whether the municipalities end up in financial distress and then being able to force the undemocratic goals of the repub party on everyone? I have had enough of the repubs crying socialism whenever the dems want to do something that will help the middle class only to watch them do so much worse in governing by unelected and incompetent, faith based fiat. Geez…..