Well…as I said yesterday, with my medical procedure taking me out of commission Sunday and Monday, I am going to try to get to all of the politics that I would normally deal with on the day before the election. So, let’s start with the proposals on the ballot here in Michigan…oh, and these proposals are citizen led and deal with the fact that the repub cheaters that control the state don’t care what the people want…they just care about their donors and the rich so the people of the state took these important issues into their own hands and got the hundreds of thousands of signatures that put them on the ballot. Proposal one deals with making marijuana for personal, recreational use legal in the state…taxed and regulated like alcohol and the tax money will go towards many programs that the repubs have decimated in recent years. I have to agree that this one should be passed for no other reason than the damage the prohibition has done to the state and it’s residents…locking up thousands of people (and very disproportionately people of color) for possessing a plant that has been demonized for political purposed since it was first made illegal in the 30′s. Proposal 2 would create an independent committee to draw the state’s legislative districts, taking the control out of the hands of politicians (the repubs) who always cheat since they can’t win elections if they don’t. This control that the repubs used in last redistricting to cement their control of Michigan even when dems got more than 10% more votes than the repubs in the last election. So, this one is a yes if you think fair elections are necessary for a fair society. Really the only thing you need to know about prop 2 is that the DeVos family is spending millions to defeat it since they will no longer be able to buy the legislature if the districts are fair. Proposal 3 also deals with voting rights and makes it easier for people to register and vote…another thing that the repubs are against since they only want white repubs to vote and have done their best to make sure it stays that way even though the state is much more diverse than their power base here in West Michigan. So, a yes vote on every proposal will make this a much more fair state and get rid of the failed war on drugs….so do it, get out and vote!
Tag Archives: Michigan
Let’s talk about Michigan…
Well…with the colonoscopy rapidly approaching Monday, and the prep that is going to put me out of commission both Sunday and Monday, I thought I’d talk about some local Michigan election issues before that…to start, get the hell out to vote Tuesday if you haven’t already….that’s the start and I don’t care if you vote for dems (okay, yeah I do) or for the cheaters on the other side, just take an hour out of your busy day and vote. Let’s start with the race for governor here in Michigan where we have Gretchen Whitmer, the dem, up against the waste of space Bill Schuette, the repub….now, if you remember a few years back when the repubs were trying to insert themselves into every woman’s health care decisions by restricting abortion care…again…and Gretchen got thrown out of the state senate by the repubs who control it for saying “vagina” on the floor of the senate…that should be enough to vote for a feisty woman who cares about fairness and truth in government…but, there are so many other reasons to vote for her that I won’t list them here but will just say that she is a true progressive who will take this state forward, not back to the 1800′s like Schuette wants and has tried to do as AG. Now, let’s remember the millions of your tax dollars that Schuette spent to try to keep our LGBT friends from getting the equality they have a right to…that they are guaranteed in the constitution…but to Schuette and his troglodyte cronies, they are less than second class citizens who need to be hated and attacked. Only one other thing you need to know about Schuette, other than he’s a trump loving right wing asshole…and that is he didn’t care when Snyder and his incompetents were poisoning the people of Flint to try to save a little money….resisting all calls for an investigation into the decisions when it is the AG’s responsibility to protect the citizens of this state from malfeasance of the government….so, it’s a pretty clear choice of who would be better for you and I and this state…vote for Gretchen and let’s put the dark days of repub control behind us…for good…
A little politics…
Well…after yesterday’s election, I thought it would be an idea to talk a little about that before I get on to the rest of the day…first up, in the Michigan governor’s race, Gretchen Whitmer won the dem primary over Abdul and Tanedar…could have voted for Abdul with his record of progressive ideas but never for Tanedar…he contributed to Ted Cruz in the 2016 election and is a dem in name only…and he had a bunch of shady deals in his past and we don’t need compromised candidates on our side. Whitmer is up over the repub by 7-8 points in the latest poll and will be our best chance of taking the governor’s office back from the repubs…and I hope we can take one of the houses back here too, and start to repair the damage that Snyder and his cronies have done over the past 8 years. One of the big happenings in Missouri was the passing of proposal A that reversed the repubs attacks on working people by repealing their right to work for less law there…the only purpose of those laws are to attack working people and the unions that made the middle class and I think people are catching on…I hope they try that here, too…I would surely vote to keep the freeloading repubs from hurting unions….last, there was the tussle in Ohio 12 where the dem is still in the running pending the counting of provisional ballots there…this in a district that went for trump by 11 point in ’16 and that the repubs had to pour millions into to basically get a draw…at last count, the repubs outspent the dems by 5-1 and only lead by .7%…so it looks like we have a great chance to take the house this fall…and to start doing the repair work that we dems always have to do after the repubs screw everything up….geez.;…
Some good news from Michigan…
Well…we finally got a little good news here in Michigan yesterday when the supreme court has allowed an anti-gerrymandering proposal to go on the ballot for November. You can guess the usual suspects who opposed having fairly drawn congressional districts..yeah, the same damn folks, all the repubs, the chamber of commerce and yadda yadda….who have a vested interest in still being allowed to cheat and choose their voters by re-districting since if the vote is fair, the repubs will lose. So now, if the proposal passes, and it is polling at 60% for right now, we will have a commission that will draw the lines here fairly, not “putting all the democrat scum” in one district as one repub commented when the latest lines were drawn under repub control. Maybe, just maybe, we can take our state back from the repub cheaters who have taxed retirees to give ceo’s huge tax breaks and who are still fighting against equality for all of Michigan’s citizens, not just the ones that the repubs deem worthy….vote….
A big deal in Michigan…
Well…not sure if any of you have heard of this since it has flown under the radar here in Michigan…there has been a ballot proposal approved for this November that takes redistricting out of the hands of politicians and puts it into the hands of an independent commission to get rid of the awful gerrymandering the repubs have done to deprive people of the vote. In every election since the repubs started to cheat and drew districts to favor them, there have been more dem votes than repub but the repubs control the entire goverment here and that is just wrong…and, we all know that they can’t win any elections without cheating since demographics are a tidal wave coming at them with the young and minority voters overwhelmingly going for the dems. This proposal would create a commission of 4 dems, 4 repubs, and 5 independents that would draw new lines in 2020 and that has the repubs sweating bullets, and, with yesterday’s SC decision that racially motivated gerrymandering is just peachy with them, the only recourse to ensure a fair vote is to take redistricting out of the hands of repubs and put it back in the hands of the people. When this happened in California, the new, fairly drawn districts took control of the state out of the hands of the minority repubs and gave it to voters which resulted in the dems having a super majority….and that can happen here, too, and we can get control of our state back from the trump loving assholes who run it now….geez…
Bastard Republicans…
Well…we all know how terrible the repubs are…but, just lately they have become even worse here in Michigan. With the idiot trump and his cronies in government changing the rules on Medicaid so states can now force work requirements on the poor who are covered by this program (let’s not forget that over 80% of people who are on Medicaid already work)….but that wasn’t enough for them…to make the poor jump through more hoops is the thing that the repubs live for so they are stampeding to screw over the poor in states that the repubs control. Even that is not enough for them here in Michigan…here, the repubs are rigging the system so that the poor whites in areas that voted repub are exempt from the work requirements…but the “urban” poor will have to report into some office every two weeks to prove they are working or the government will assign them unpaid work before they can retain the healthcare that is keeping them alive in many cases. Sounds pretty racist doesn’t it? In cities where the poor live, the makeup is primarily minorities…and guess who they vote for? I have had enough of the repubs punishing the poor just for being poor and voting dem…we need to throw these assholes out in the fall…it’s hard enough being poor without the repubs making it worse…geez….
Rick Snyder is not too bright…
Well…thought I’d go with a little bit of local politics today after just seeing an ad that our idiot governor has done for his underling who is running for governor. In the ad, Snyder touts the “accomplishments” of his administration and he actually uses right to work as an accomplishment…yep he’s proud of the hand he has had in killing unions in this country and the result of lower wages for the people who are left working here…I mean, who the hell is that aimed at? At best, right to work is supported by only about 40% of the people in Michigan and those are all repubs…does he think that any independent who supports working people is going to think that’s a plus? I wonder if he should put in new ads that he poisoned an entire city and has done nothing to help Flint? I wonder if another ad should be that he passed the biggest tax increase on retirees in the history of the state? Or, another one that he and his repub cronies rigged the system so even though dems got more votes total in the last election, repubs control the entire state? You get my drift…The ads against Brian Calley are going to write themselves….and Snyder is not too bright if he thinks his “accomplishments” will sway anyone to continue the policies that have screwed over workers across the state…geez…
This is huge and no one noticed….
Well…with all of the election coverage of our great win in Alabama, a huge occurrence happened here in Michigan an no one really noticed. Just this week, petition signatures were approved that puts non-partisan redistricting on the ballot for 2018….yep, you heard that right, this proposal would take the 2020 redistricting out of the hands of the repubs who have cheated through gerrymandering to maintain their strangle hold on Michigan politics even though they have gotten many less votes…and now, that is going away if we can pass this citizen fueled effort on the ballot. One of the things that people must understand is the only reason that the repubs control the government is that they cheat…without the ability to cheat, they would be the minority party they deserve to be…and I don’t mind that this same gerrymandering would be prevented when the dems take control in the future…why wouldn’t anyone with ethics and honor want our elections to be fair? With the court cases across the country that are throwing out the repub drawn maps almost daily, and now with referendums that will force fairly drawn maps, we are finally turning the tide from the repub cheaters and taking back our democracy from the big money that props up these cheaters….it’s about damn time….
Go Blue!
Well…have been just taking it easy today with feeling a little crappy today but I thought I needed to say something about the sweet sixteen and my team Michigan….it is a little weird watching it on the internet since the cbs channel that my son has on the server is from Canada…really strange commercials for companies I’ve never heard of….I’ll leave it there…Go Blue!
Less than two weeks to go…
Well….it’s less than two weeks to go until the election and I am happy that the season is almost over….one of the takeaways from this one is how corrosive Citizens United is to democracy….and the fact that dark money from the repub side is flooding into senate races to the tune of 25 million dollars for the last two weeks for just 6 seats just shows that they are poised to buy the election…but, the simple fact is that if we vote, we win…no matter how much money the other side spends…if we vote, we win. I really do hope that Trump is toxic for the down ballot races here in Michigan so we have at least a chance of taking back the house here to stop the tea party idiots and Snyder from doing more damage…..first they tax my retirement and give it to Ceo’s, then they poison an entire city and think it’s okay since they are not republicans….just need everyone to get out and vote…we need the supreme court to go back to following the constitution, not ideology…geez…