Tag Archives: Michigan

Courser and Gamrat get what they deserve…

Well…just wanted to talk about this obscure Michigan story for a minute…yesterday I read about this one with just a little too much glee but I don’t feel bad about it….if you remember, Courser and Gamrat were tea party darlings that were elected to the Michigan house on their standard “family values” and integrity platform that all of these idiots spout…but that only applies to the peons like you and me. As soon as these two got into office, they started an affair that took most of their time and they basically stopped doing the job they were elected to do…which, how crazy these two are, was not a bad thing…after a while their staff got tired of covering for them and the affair came to light…then these “family values” repubs got tossed from the legislature and I thought we’d heard the last from them…but, this week, the AG here filed felony charges against both of these idiots for lying to investigators…and the charges for ole Courser could land him in jail for 20 years while Gamrat could be gone for 10 or so…typical, typical repubs who don’t think the law applies to them…okay, I’m not going to apologize for being gleeful about this…this is the type of karma that needs to happen more often….

Now we need the EPA?

Well…as you know, there has been a huge crisis in Flint where or governor’s man allowed the city to be poisoned with lead to save a few hundred dollars a week, and now the blame shifting has started where all of the repubs that were (and still are in charge) are trying to shift the blame to the EPA saying that they didn’t do enough to prevent the problem…and not enough oversight so the water would be safe. Now, I sure hope you see the irony in this coming from the repubs…the same repubs who have spent the years since the clean water act was passed trying to gut the EPA and filing suit after suit in the courts to prevent them from ensuring that the water in this country is clean. So now, when the model that the repubs want, state control of the cleanliness of water fails, they cry and cry that it’s the EPA’s fault. I am tired of the hypocrites on the right gutting government and the programs that we need to have a safe environment to give tax cuts to the rich and then jumping up and saying “see, government doesn’t work”…..it would work if they did their damn jobs for a change instead of attacking the poor and unions…I’ve had enough of the party of “no responsibility”….geez….

What did Snyder know and when did he know it?

Well…I know the title is somewhat of a cliche, but I think it gets to the crux of the matter in the Flint water crisis…not only did they do a minimum of 1.5 billion dollars in damage to the Flint water system by choosing to not treat the Flint river water to save a couple hundred thousand a year, but did they know they were doing it? Ole Snyder has said he didn’t hear of the problems until October 1st of last year, even though they had been going on for over a year, but then why were members of his staff ordering the installation of water filters in Flint back in July? It appears that ole Snyder is just another of the lying repubs who really don’t give a damn about anyone but the rich and business…just like ole GW did with New Orleans and the poor there, ole Snyder has done to Flint…permanent damage to the state and it’s people to serve their god of tax cuts and austerity…he should be in jail…

No Paris today…

Well…I was going to do one on the tragedy in Paris but what more can I say than it is one of the most evil things I have ever seen..and I’ve been around for a long time…one of the reactions that I see as a continuation of the fear based decision making of the repubs is that old Snyder has stopped the work being done for Michigan to take in some of these refugees….never mind that only one of the killers in Paris were from the refugee diaspora…that doesn’t matter to the repubs who are just scared shitless of everything…there was a good article out on Kos today that looks at the psychology of conservatives and it is not a pretty picture…worth reading, but not pretty….and with the repub candidates, you can see their bias showing through when ole Jeb! said that we should only help christian refugees….as if that would be any easier to prove than not being a terrorist….still shaking my head at all of this and I will expand on that tomorrow…but, right now…I am just going to get more ice water and watch some racing….

This is wrong…

Well…just read an article about the tax burden here in Michigan and it just confirms what I have been saying since the repubs cut taxes for corporations here…they are no longer paying their fair share of what it takes to run this state…in fact, the people are paying twice what corporations pay in income taxes just in the so called “sin” taxes on tobacco and alcohol…yep, you heard that right, the corporations whose trucks destroy the roads and whose pollution fouls the air and land pay so little in taxes that the few people that drink and smoke pay more in taxes just on those two items than corporations do with the giant tax cuts they were given by Snyder and the repubs. This continues the repubs plan to shift the burden of taxation to the middle class and the poor while allowing corporations to steal the use of the state without paying for it…or understanding that these tax cuts do nothing but destroy the ability of the state to pay it’s bills, as we see from the fight here to try to figure out how to fix Michigan’s roads. Now, I don’t mind paying my taxes because that is what you do in a society…but taxes have to be fair, and since “corporations are people” they should pay their fair share….geez…

The problem in Michigan…

Well….as everyone predicted, proposal one to fix the roads here failed by a huge margin…and, as predicted, the repubs are misinterpreting the result to mean that the people here support their tax cut at all cost policies that have put us in this mess over the past 6 years. What these idiots need to do is to read the polls of why people voted no…the largest being that the legislature abdicated its responsibility to the state and the people to maintain the infrastructure just to give tax cuts to corporations and the rich. The problem is that tax cuts do not work…let me say that again…tax cuts do not work to spur growth or increase tax revenues…never have, never will…and the giveaway over the past 6 years of repub control is estimated to be 3.5 billion dollars…more than enough to repair the roads, fix the schools, and to share the revenue with our cities, which is where the growth comes from…not giving tax cuts to millionaires with the blind hope they will invest and create jobs. Now, let’s put an end to the idea that we are overtaxed, too…that honor goes to Minnesota who has a tax rate that is 30% higher than Michigan and has outpaced us in growth every year…and they fund their schools, fix their roads, and their cities are thriving. We need to stop this tax cut nonsense that has put many repub controlled states into this same downward spiral we see here in Michigan…and stop the faith based economics that has kept Michigan from the growth it could accomplish with a rational tax policy…I don’t mind paying a little more in taxes…just as long as it doesn’t end up in a CEO’s pocket like the last tax cut for corporations did….geez…

No on proposal 1

Well…if you don’t remember, there is an election tomorrow to vote on whether to raise the sales tax here in Michigan to repair the terrible roads that all of us drive on. I am going to vote no on this proposal for a number of reasons…the first being that sales tax increases are hardest on the poor and middle class as a percentage of their income and that is not a fair way to pay for infrastructure projects. My second reason is that the people who do the most damage to the roads, corporations that use them for commerce, won’t have to kick a dime in to pay for all that damage…where is the tax increase on them to help? On top of the sales tax increase, the proposal would raise the registration fee on every car by almost $50 dollars per car that normal folks can’t just write off as corporations do. To raise the the 1.3 billion dollars that this proposal is supposed to raise, why not just rescind the 1.3 billion dollar tax cut the corporations got that was paid for by me and other people living on their retirement savings? This proposal is just another failure by the repub run legislature to do their jobs as they were elected to do…never before did a sitting legislature in Michigan abdicate their responsibility to do what was necessary to keep the state moving…I think it’s just a ploy for them to be able to say they never raised taxes…that the people did…what a bunch of crap…geez…

Another repub controlled state has a budget crisis…

Well…just had to write this one early so I won’t forget to do it today…just finished up reading the Detroit papers today and guess what the headline was….that our wonderful Michigan…home of tax cuts for the rich and business pushed by the repubs here is running the biggest deficit in its history, with the projections being that this years budget will see close to a 600 million dollar shortfall driven mostly by tax credits for business that the governor and legislators are “surprised” that they are taking. But, they are the only ones that are surprised…what the hell did they think was going to happen? That corporations would not take these giveaways out of the goodness of their hearts? Michigan now follows Kansas and Wisconsin into the black hole of tax cuts that do nothing to spur the economy or create jobs…especially when business is sitting on more cash than ever in the history of the world.  The only time that tax cuts may work is when the cuts will free up money that business will spend on hiring or new equipment…tax cuts with so much retained cash just go to stock buybacks or increased CEO pay…nothing else. So, who pays for this boondoggle?  If Michigan follows the pattern of every repub controlled state, there will be cuts to education and every other program that benefits anyone but business…and the state will be a worse place to live…just like every state under repub control…but they don’t care if business is happy…geez….

Vaccines work…

Well…with the huge outbreak of whooping cough in Traverse City over the past couple of weeks, we are seeing the results of the misguided efforts on the right to cater to the anti-vax crowd and their wrongheaded idea that vaccines cause autism. A few years back, the repubs here in Michigan effectively gutted the herd protections that vaccines bring by allowing parents to opt out by just filing a paper with the state saying they object to vaccinating their kids for any reason whatever…and this is what we got from that law…hundreds of cases of whooping cough, measles, mumps, and other preventable diseases that were on the verge of eradication before people started to believe that vaccines were a plot or a danger to their kids…driven mostly by fox news and fear mongers there. I just want every parent that wants to not vaccinate their kids to be shown the pictures of the polio epidemic before the Salk vaccine was invented and see the death and destruction that occurred before this breakthrough.  I have vaccinated all of my kids with no reservations whatsoever…I still remember how sick I was with mumps and measles when I was a kid before the advent of vaccines for those diseases and surely didn’t want my kids to go through it…for the sickness or even the deaths that came from these diseases…I hope people come to their senses and vaccinate their kids…if they don’t, they put everyone at risk and I don’t think it’s their decision to make…geez….

A disappointing day…

Well….it has been a disappointing day so far and it looks like it will get worse later….haven’t been able to get on the bike since it has been raining all morning and I have no energy at all…and, it will get worse later since it looks like the repubs are going to win today and that will leave us good guys in the wilderness for the next two years until we take the entire government back from the idiots on the right…and there are idiots on the right…just look at Joni Ernst who looks to win in her senate race…she is the one who has said in speeches that she will fight against the UN coming in and forcing people off their land and into the cities…yep, she actually believes that stupid conspiracy theory…but the people who vote for here are even dumber than she is…when I went to vote today at around 9:30…there had been only 85 people who had voted in my precinct in the first two and a half hours and the place looked like a morgue…the sad thing is for us dems is that if we just get off our lazy asses and vote, we will turn the repubs out forever…I guess having the rich own this country is just not that important to our side….depressing to say the least…