Well….fun day yesterday but feel like crap today…worth it, but haven’t felt like this in a while….I did lose at pool but it was a hard fought loss so I don’t feel bad about it. The frickin Netflix wasn’t working last night so I watched my concert dvd’s and may have had it too loud….did the DT thing, too, which always makes me cringe when I get up in the morning but I think my friends understand….hope so…not much to do today….need to keep trying to fix my printer and I think C is coming into town…might have a lunch with T if everything works out and that should be fun. As I said before….I feel a little crappy so I’m going to stop now…more later…
Monthly Archives: March 2011
The Czar of Michigan strikes again….
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…
March 22nd
Well…an interesting day yesterday and I had a bunch of stuff to do which is really unusual as you know. I did get to meet my new financial guy and found out that I’ve made a bunch of money since December and I feel quite a bit better that I’m not going completely broke. The repair guys came for my dryer but there is more work to be done there so that makes more work for me in the next couple of days…oh, well. It looks like I’ll be able to pay the rent for April so I’m even going to go grocery shopping this morning…I am getting so tired of chicken that I’m not buying any this week, going to buy a lot of stuff that is bad for me but tastes really good and splurge a little…well…turkey isn’t that bad, is it? I am going to buy some chips and some burger but I only eat red meat about once a month now so that’s not too bad. Need to get some more broccoli, too. Not too much to do today…you already know part of it and I am going out to shoot pool today…the veil of darkness is starting to lift and the brain is working again so you may get three today….more later…
Oh, hope the car starts this morning…
Charter schools…
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…
March 21st
Well…a long night and day yesterday when I come to think of it….still kind of down and have shifted into low gear to cope with it…have a bunch of stuff to do today and none of it is anything I want to do…but that’s what life is getting to be like right now. Had to get this place ready for the maint guys to come and service my dryer…I guess they don’t want it to start on fire….it will be nice if they fix the vent since it has been dumping into the place for a couple of years…but it’s an electric dryer so no fumes…maybe that wouldn’t be bad…to have fumes, that is. Other than that, not much to do today….need to go out for supplies after I see my financial guy…a new one since Matt quit and I am not looking forward to meeting him…but I need cash to pay the rent so I guess it’s a necessary evil. I will try to get a couple out with new topics today….
Okay…here’s an update…battery was dead in the car this morning and the weird thing is that Tom and I talked about dead batteries yesterday…I was able to get it started by pushing it down the hill (something to be said for sticks) and left it running at Kava…it started after I pulled in here so maybe I just didn’t get the door closed after I went out for a paper yesterday…it might also be that I haven’t taken it anywhere except to coffee for the last two weeks and it gradually went dead….it is time for a new battery, though…about every three years…we’ll see if it starts when I have to go out later this morning…still going to park it in a hill when I stop, though…..
March 20th
Well…this one is going to be short since I just have nothing to say…it looks like a curl up on the couch and lick the wounds day and I don’t know if I can even read the paper….so, more later after the darkness lifts….
Okay..still not much better but i still feel a responsibility to add a little more right now…had to clean up my washer and dryer since they are coming to service them tomorrow…and that means a lot of other work for me in the morning….I am looking forward to seeing if Michigan is real in NCAA’s against Duke this aft…I think they screwed Bristol up when they repaved it…it is just not as much fun to watch as it used to be…and you couldn’t get a ticket to go in person for almost 10 years but looking at the stands today it looks about 30% empty….and, as I’ve said, I hate these new cars….not much else to do today…need to take a shower and get ready for the game so I’ll stop here…
March 19th
Well…running late this morning and there is no reason for it…I’ve been up since 5 or so and just sitting and thinking….kind of a dangerous thing to be doing right now but I am waiting for the sun to come up and melt the frost off the car so I can go get newspapers….nope, I’m not going to scrape the windows as a matter of principle…it’s getting to the end of March and that crap is supposed to be over so I’ll just sit here and wait. Boring, boring night last night and I think I’m moving back to enduring my life again instead of living it….and I don’t think the cocktails help other than the boredom goes away for just a little while…so, what to do? Not sure yet…I’ll let you know if there is any breakthrough and miraculous clarity sets in. Not much to do today….there is the Bristol race to be seen and Sebring that is not on tv so I’ll have to watch it on the computer if I want to see it….going to try to get a couple out today but i have no inkling what they are going to be yet…maybe some navel-gazing, indulgent crap…who knows?
Okay….
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…
March 18th
Well…a different night than I expected….no Jamo for St. Patty’s day since K wanted to go to Logan’s and there we no way I was going to fight those crowds….so, it was a night off that I really needed but kind of boring…Michigan State made a run at the end but UCLA beat them…not unexpected to me with how inconsistent their play had been….but, the Wings won even playing badly so that was good. As you can see, the brain is still not functioning right….still hard to get the flow going but I’ll keep trying….no plans for today….need a few groceries and to get a bike ride in but that’s about it….Oh, and Michigan plays this aft so that could be a diversion for a few minutes anyway….I will get a couple out later and hope to be better than yesterday…but, you’ll never know unless you come back….more later…
Revisionist history….
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…