Tag Archives: Michigan

Had to come back to this one…

Well…had this one attached to this morning’s life column but, as I thought about it, it didn’t really fit there so I thought I’d do a new one…if you remember, a few months back a couple of our wonderful repub legislators here in Michigan conspired to run a fake candidate so the turncoat Schmidt could rig the election…with an article int he Free Press this morning, it appears I was right…a State Police investigator here in Michigan says that both Schmidt and Bolger have conspired to commit perjury in their attempt to defraud the voters here in Michigan….now, I think our AG Schutte should stop chasing non-existent voter fraud and charge these criminals with the felony they deserve…just another example of the flagrant disregard for the laws of the land that the repubs here in Michigan show every day….these two should have resigned and now the rest of the party’s leadership, if there is any, should make sure this happens as soon as possible….

The only voter fraud is being done by the Republicans…

Well…if you are a regular reader here, you might have seen me do a post on the shady dealings here in GR (that’s Grand Rapids to those of you that aren’t from around here) where a long time Democratic rep Roy Schmidt waited until it the last few minutes of the filing deadline to switch parties, ensuring that the dems would not be able to register anyone to oppose him; leaving the dems to the arduous task of a write in campaign for their candidate. This sleazy nonsense has had some details put to it over the past couple of days, and it is even worse than was reported a few months back. It appears that rep Schmidt and the speaker of the house Jase Bolger, both repubs, put together a nasty little plan that tried to place one of rep Schmidt’s sons friends on the ballot as a dem with the stipulation that this young man not run any campaign so that rep Schmidt would have no opposition and would fix the election for him. Rep Schmidt even went so far as to pay this young man $1,000 dollars if he would register and even had his chief of staff file the paperwork…even though the young man didn’t live in the district. Then, we have the prosecutor for Kent County saying that while the move was sleazy, it didn’t break any laws. But, this is not true…if you prompt someone to make a false statement in court or on a political filing…it is called suborning perjury and it is certainly against the law. There is enough evidence here to charge both Schmidt and Bolger with this crime, this voter fraud that they say they are so opposed to and are so afraid of. At the very least, these two should immediately resign so a fair election can take place…after all, it’s what the repubs say they want….geez…

Something weird and surprising here in Michigan….

Well….I have been vegging it out today in the heat but I do have to comment on a weird occurrence that happened a couple of days ago here…as you probably know, across the country the repubs have been passing new laws aimed at “voter fraud” but whose true purpose is to suppress the votes of those Americans that tend to vote for the dems since the repubs can’t win on their ideas. That same thing was happening here in Michigan using the model laws that have been dreamed up by ALEC…the extreme right wing organization that gave us the “stand your ground” laws that have been responsible for hundreds of deaths across the country. But, there was surprising thing that happened here after the repubs passed bills to do the same thing…our governor vetoed them…yep, my jaw dropped too when I read about it….it is the first time that a repub governor had the guts to go against the party lockstep and lies that led to those laws. I am starting to get a grudging respect for Governor Snyder…even though he has gone along with the righties many times since he was elected and I don’t agree with any of them….this time he did what was right for all of the people of Michigan, not just those who voted for him. So, thank you Mr. Snyder…keep doing what is right…not just for the political right….

More lawlessness from the right…

Well…I marvel at times how the repubs became known as the “law and order” party when, here in Michigan, we have a repub AG that thinks he is the only person who determines what the law means…starting with the medical marijuana law (or I should say continuing with this law) which he opposed when it was put on the ballot a few years back, Mr. Schutte has formed a pattern of lawlessness that would make a bank robber proud. His latest nonsense came after the supreme court ruling on healthcare yesterday when he said that he would not take part in implementing the law saying that we should wait until after the election in November when he feels that the repubs will win the presidency and repeal the law. First, this man has a duty to all of the citizens of Michigan….not to just the hard right that he panders to on a daily basis and those of us that don’t have insurance would like the possibility of getting it that comes from the new law. Second, when did our constitution change to read that the AG could substitute his political decisions for the will of the people? The courts here have slapped this idiot numerous times, showing that he is not the great legal mind he thinks he is but just some overly political hack using his office to push his crazy far right agenda on the people. But, this is just the latest outrage from this man…and Governor Snyder should straighten him out today…geez….

There is nonsense in the world…

Well…not sure if you’ve heard what is happening here in Michigan, but I marvel at the repubs that are running the show here…not so much our governor, who seems to have a somewhat level head on his shoulders, but the repubs that are running the house here. Starting with the culture war nonsense where they are trying to overturn Roe v. Wade with a bunch of laws that will further restrict women’s rights…and that will be struck down by the courts as these model laws have been across the country and now, many of these legislators that have been purchased by the owner of the Ambassador bridge, are now trying to get a constitutional amendment that would not allow any infrastructure to be built without the legislature’s approval; even if it is done at no cost to Michigan. I can see a real reason for a part-time legislature if this is the nonsense we get from these people…nothing on getting us back to work, nothing for improving our schools, nothing for anyone but their donors and acting like the only people they represent are the ones that voted for them…and I think that is the problem with this country right now…the repubs don’t give a damn about anyone but their base and only legislate for them…geez…

Just another thought…

Well…I don’t know how I forgot this one from the papers today….and I think it’s a little reported consequence of the emergency manager law here in Michigan that lets officials appointed by the governor take over cities and towns that are in financial distress….and it gives the repubs here just another tool to jam their vision of the state as a corporate paradise down the electorates throat. In two school districts that have been taken over, the appointed repubs are proposing that all of the eduction of the children there be turned over to for profit corporations; firing all of the teachers and administrators (yep, they are union workers), something that they tried through legislation but were defeated. What else are they going to destroy before we tell them we’ve had enough of this crap? Corporations and privatization are not the solution to every problem that is facing us here in Michigan…if that were the case, why don’t we privatize the legislature and the governor’s office? What about the families that now don’t know where their kids are going to go to school in the fall? What about the teachers who have worked their whole lives and now are being told to “reapply” for their jobs at half the pay they were making before? And, what about the only two companies who have said they are interested in taking on this job and whose schools they currently run are substandard in performance to the public schools they compete with? This is just another attempt by the repubs to destroy the unions that they have an unreasonable hatred for…these guys have no shame and are the biggest threat to democracy that we have ever faced….geez…

A few things I find funny..

Well…have been thinking about a few things this morning and there are a few of them that I find funny…the funniest one was the bus tour that Mitt Romney did here in Michigan over the past few days where he touted the “jobs, jobs, jobs” that would come from his administration….but not once in the time here did he mention unions and his hatred of them and the fact that policies that he supports would destroy most of them…and along with them, the ability of people get a good job that would pay a living wage…I wonder what “jobs” he was talking about?

Another thing I find funny is the fact the businesses here in Michigan, and across the country have stopped hiring even after the huge tax cut they were given by the repubs that was supposed to work it’s “magic” and create “jobs, jobs, jobs”….but, no one is paying attention here…have never seen this fact mentioned in any newspaper (and I read almost a dozen of them everyday) or by any other media outlet…when did the lies of the repubs stop being news?

I think I’m getting fatigued by all of the political nonsense that is going on…oh, I do have one more thing I find funny…that the repubs are declaring “victory” in Wisconsin since Walker retained the governor’s chair…but they never mention that they lost the senate to the dems…let’s see him try to get any of the radical right crap passed now…and this idiot is now being considered as a VP candidate…geez…

Troglodyte Republicans rule in Michigan…

Well….if you needed a reason to believe that the repubs running this state are troglodytes from another era, you just need to hear what happened yesterday in the House here in Michigan. While there was a debate going on over putting onerous new restrictions on women’s freedom by restricting access to abortion, one of the female house members got up to speak and used the word “vagina” in telling them to keep their hands off her health….well…after this happened, two of the women that opposed these new restrictions and had spoken out against them were not allowed to speak on other bills that were pending in the House….silenced because they opposed the majority and dared to speak out against them…I shouldn’t really be surprised with the way that the repubs here govern…like they don’t have to follow the rules and will use any tactic to make sure the opposition has no voice…from the restrictions put on voting rights to this latest outrage the repubs here show every day that they don’t care about democracy, just the naked exercise of power to ensure their extreme right wing agenda gets jammed down out throats…geez…

I’ll grudgingly give it to Snyder…

Well…as you know, I’ve had mixed feelings about our governor here in Michigan, and when I think that he is falling to the right wing nuts in his party he does what he did today…thinking about the people of the state by bypassing the legislature and working on an agreement with Canada and the Federal government to build a new bridge from Detroit to Canada. After the ambassador bridge owner, Matty Maroun, bought enough legislators in his party to stall legislation that would approve the bridge, Snyder proved that he may be the pragmatist that he has claimed to be by using the powers of the governor’s office to move the state ahead…to stop the extortion by the Marouns and to make trade easier between the US and our largest trading partner….and to remove the bottleneck that creates hours of delays for the trucks carrying that trade. So, for today, I’ll say “good job” and keep it up for bucking a big donor and doing what is right for all of the people of Michigan…

Just some nonsense…

Well…there really is nothing going on in politics that I want to comment on right now except the nonsense that is going on with the repubs…and I know what your question is going to be: “it’s all nonsense with the repubs so what is different now?”….on a scale of 1 to 10 this one would just be a three or so but here it is…the big deal that is going on is concerned with where the hotel rooms are for the Michigan delegation to the repub convention…since this delegation has been given a block of rooms that are near Romney’s, the speculation has arisen that our governor, Rick Snyder, is going to be the vice president pick. It’s as I told you, there is just not much going on in politics so the news outlets have to pick up on this stuff….but, they are wrong…Snyder is nowhere near conservative enough for the repub electorate to stomach…you read it here first…Snyder will not be the VP pick for the repubs….what a slow news day….geez….

One last thing…and something I have been talking about for a while….that because of the austerity measures that were forced on the country by the repubs, we have seen job growth come to a standstill with the report that is out today…Keynes is proven right again and if I were Obama, I’d be attacking the repubs on just this issue…and using Europe as the bad example not to follow while their jobs growth is even worse with the extreme austerity they have practiced…