THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

IT IS BIG SISTER'S PROPOSAL

A reader e-mailed us that the headline of our previous article, "Big Sister's Slice-and-Dice-the-Babies-for-Science Proposal Nearly on Ballot", was deceptive.  The reason?  The appearance of Big Sister a.k.a. G.R. Mayor George Heartwell at a conference last fall promoting the ballot proposal doesn't make it HIS proposal.  Perhaps, but Big Sister did more than appear at an event hosted by the Michigan Citizens for Stem Cell Research and Cures.  MCSCRC is the force behind the November ballot proposal to legalize the destruction of embryonic human beings by researchers, and Big Sister sits on the organization's Board of Directors.  So, it is his proposal.

P.S. Nick DeLeeuw reports that Big Sister's proposal has gotten enough petition signatures to put on this November's statewide ballot.  Now we'll see in a few months' time whether obfuscations, lies, and utilitarianism hold greater sway with the voters than commonsense, truth, and respect for human dignity.

THE CORRUPTION OF REFORMERS

The indefatigable Nick DeLeeuw of RightMichigan.com has done an excellent job on reporting this bit of corruption called Reform Michigan Government Now.  Check out his most recent series of articles on this murky group's attempt to dilute the vote and influence of ordinary Michiganders by consolidating the state's political power into the hands of fewer entrenched incumbents:

PHANTOM FUNDING

DECIDING PARTISAN CONTROL OF LANSING TEN YEARS AT A TIME BY THE FLIP OF A COIN!

DECREASED REPRESENTATION AND STRONGER CENTRALIZED LANSING GOVERNMENT

YOU ONLY RUN A STEALTH CAMPAIGN IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING BIG AND UGLY TO HIDE

Good work, Nick!

"SHRINK GOVERNMENT" PETITION CONCENTRATES POLITICAL POWER

Reform Michigan Government Now, a cryptic group with unknown sources of financing (here and here), is collecting voter signatures to put a series of constitutional amendments on the November ballot.  These amendments would reduce the number of state officeholders and cut their pay.  To succeed, Reform Michigan must get 371,000 signatures on its petition by July 7th.  That would appear to be a hurdle the group cannot clear, and so these proposed amendments are likely a dead letter.  That's just as well.

There are two reasons Michiganders should oppose the Reform Michigan amendments.  First, it is always a dubious proposition to amend the constitution for partisan advantage.  There is a reason why Michigan Democrats are high on this effort.  One proposed amendment cuts the number of state supreme court justices from seven to five, and the amendment is drafted in a way so that the two justices who would be tossed from the bench are Republicans.  Similarly it cuts the state court of appeals from 28 to 21 judges, although without a clear-cut partisan advantage resulting (but then the court of appeals is not nearly as political as the supreme court in any case).

Another amendment reduces the number of state representatives from 110 to 82 and state senators from 38 to 28.  These reductions would drive the creation of new legislative districts that favor the Democrats, by allowing the packing of Republican voters into a few solid "red" districts while spreading out Democratic voters across many districts in which they constitute a majority, but not overwhelmingly so.  In this way, fewer districts help Democrats to hold a majority in the house and senate.

These are the ways in which the Reform Michigan amendments re-tool the state constitution to gain control of the supreme court, the senate, and the house for the Democrats at the expense of the Republicans.  (And yes, it would be just as noxious if it were the other way around.)  Of course, it is properly the prerogative of the voters to determine which party is in control and not behind-the-scenes operators pushing allegedly good-government constitutional amendments with convenient side effects for their cause.

And that brings us to the second reason for opposing the Reform Michigan amendments.  They work against good government.  Representative government should be, after all, representative.  As it stands, 110 state representatives and 38 state senators are not a large number of legislators for 10 million Michiganders.  The proposed amendment reducing the size of the state house would concentrate lawmaking into fewer hands necessarily less representative and more remote from their constituents.  The greater the number of constituents a legislator represents, the less influence any one constituent or small group of them has with him.  Thus, the legislator is even more captive to powerful constituents and special interests.  While this problem can be mitigated by giving a legislator a bigger staff, it does put a bureaucratic barrier between him and the ordinary constituent.

Better that we have double the number of legislators in the house and senate than any fewer.  Smaller districts are more representative of the diverse communities that make up our state.  Plus we can make them part-time lawmakers, because the same amount of legislative work could be spread across more people.  Also, as part-timers, our legislators receiving only part-time pay literally could not afford to isolate themselves from the real world the rest of us live in.  Just the opposite happens with the Reform Michigan amendments.  Even though they modestly cut the pay of officeholders, the smaller number of legislators would remain full-timers drawing a sufficiently high salary to make Lansing their source of financial well-being rather than the communities they come from.

It is a misguided notion that we need "professional" legislators in Lansing -- i.e.,  we need men and women drawing good salaries and benefits from the taxpayers to work full-time on making new laws.  Consider that full-time lawmaking means full-time law-changing.  That is not good government.  The law should be limited in what it rules, and what it does and how it does should not be in doubt.  That is not achieved with a continuous flow of new legislation.  It is a chaos to which "professional" legislators attach themselves by our mandate that they become full-time lawmakers rather than as our occasional citizen-emissaries to Lansing to represent our communities on only the most pressing public issues.

The Reform Michigan constitutional amendments not only stink of hack partisanship but would restructure our state government to concentrate it into fewer hands more beholden to special interests than to ordinary Michiganders.

IT'S THE TAXPAYERS, NOT THE VOTERS, WHO GOT SHAFTED BY MICHIGAN'S EARLY PRIMARY

Now that it looks like a re-do of the Michigan Democratic presidential primary is in the dustbin, it's time to sort through this mess.

There's been a lot of huffing and puffing over how the national Republican and (especially) Democratic parties "disenfranchised" Michigan presidential primary voters.  Of course, the state, not national, party organizations have themselves to blame.  The national organizations laid down the rules on scheduling primaries.  They permitted only a few states to hold primaries or caucuses ahead of "Super Tuesday" on February 5th.  They clearly warned the state organizations that holding an early primary would result in some or even all of the selected delegates not being seated at this summer's presidential conventions.

Nevertheless, Michigan Republicans and Democrats blundered forward with an early primary in plain violation of the national party rules -- and now are paying the price for it.  Because the Republican presidential nominee is a settled matter, no one on that side of the aisle cares anymore.  However, the Democrats still have a tight race for the nomination, and so Michigan delegates now might matter if they are seated.  Thus, the sound and fury during the past few weeks about the Democratic national party "disenfranchising" Michigan voters if either the national party doesn't seat the delegates chosen in the renegade primary or the voters don't get another primary to chose again.

The first big piece of clutter to clear out of the way is that voters have NO constitutional right to choose a political party's nominee for public office.  Political parties can pick their nominees any way they want, whether it's a primary, a caucus, a convention, or a smoke-filled room.  Whether or not it is savvy, reasonable, or fair for a political party to use one method instead of another is not the point.  The First Amendment freedom of association is.  So, the Republican and Democratic national parties can dictate any rules they deem fit for determining who their presidential nominees will be.  If they want to exercise control over the primary calendar (which, in light of how the Democratic contest is playing out, trying to prevent a front-loaded calendar seems not to have been such a bad idea), they can do so.

And if they want to penalize state parties that violate that schedule, they can do so.  It should be clear to everyone by now that this is a hard fact of life.  The courts have repeatedly refused to get into this mess, because they know they have no jurisdiction over the matter.  So why all the hullabaloo directed at the national parties?  Why aren't we thoroughly ticked off with the Michigan Republicans and Democrats who took our tax dollars to hold presidential primaries to chose delegates who would not be seated at the summer conventions?  They are the ones who took $10 million from taxpayer wallets to hold a meaningless event -- indeed, an event they knew was meaningless at the time.

In fact, why do the taxpayers even pay for political party contests in the first place?  How is it that we are obliged to subsidize the nomination process of the Republican and Democratic parties over which, by their First Amendment rights, we have no control?  Primaries might well be a good way for parties to select their nominees, but let them and not the taxpayers pay for it.  Meanwhile, keep in mind those state pols who blew your money on a pointless presidential primary the next time he or she is trolling for your vote.

THE FOOL'S GOLD OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION

Today Guv Jen gives her sixth State of the State address.  One of the misbegotten notions she will be peddling is that getting more kids into college will help to reverse Michigan's economic decline.  To that end, according to the Grand Rapids Press, she will pitch a new $300 million taxpayer fund to replace "industrial-model" high schools with those offering study "relevant to the real world".  That relevance is essentially college prep, as explained by Governor Granholm's education advisor Chuck Wilbur:  "[She] believes that to diversify Michigan's economy and create jobs, we have to transform our schools so that every Michigan student can attend a high school that prepares them for success in college and in the workplace."

To say the least, that puts the cart before the horse when it comes to building new businesses.  Exactly how pushing more and more kids into college to get degrees for jobs that don't exist in Michigan, because the businesses that would provide those jobs don't exist in Michigan, will make those businesses suddenly appear in Michigan is not clear.  Granted, companies occasionally move into areas to take advantage of workforces that have characteristics well-suited to their requirements, but it is hardly the rule for the formation of new businesses.  And to the extent that it does happen, it is because that area has a well-established reputation for a particular type of workforce, which is acquired over a period of decades not a few years.

So Granholm's new education program isn't going to turn around the Michigan economy.  What it would do is exacerbate the trend of spreading out what students used to learn in twelve years over sixteen or more years now.  Plus it would further gut vocational training at the high school level, shoving it off to tuition-greedy colleges more than happy to sell degrees for what had been learned through apprenticeships and OJT, and then putting our public high schools at the service of colleges as student prep factories for them.

There is no argument that college is the right path for a genuine liberal education or for training in a true profession (e.g., medicine or the law).  However, a college degree is fool's gold for those looking for jobs in sales, teaching, journalism, business management, and the myriad of other careers that have become ersatz professions because colleges have successfully persuaded students, parents, and employers that a prospective employee is not qualified without that degree.  The end result is that most kids who get a college degree today have nothing but an expensive credential that lands them a job that any high school graduate could have gotten a generation ago -- WITHOUT the heavy burden of paying back a student loan.  On top of all this, college-level training teaches kids even less than what they used to learn through high school vocational classes, apprenticeships, and job experience.

We are faced with serious, fundamental problems in education today.  Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are wasted to provide educrats with sinecures who in return have wrecked the education of our children at all levels.  An excellent study by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy on how this has happened in higher education by the overselling of college is available here.  (Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher for posting on this interesting paper.)

MICHIGAN MOVIE MADNESS

Mitch Albom, the talented sports columnist and author, spoke before the Michigan State Senate on Tuesday to exhort our solons to get off the dime and double the special tax breaks the state is already handing out to filmmakers.  According to the Detroit Free Press, the celebrity columnist told the Senate Commerce & Tourism Committee, "This is a booming, growing business, [and] there is a simple way for us to get into it.  Incentives will do it."  Specifically, he advised the senate to increase the special tax cut for production companies filming in Michigan from 20% to 40%.

No doubt we can be sure that Albom knows of what he speaks.  He certainly must be drawing upon a well of expertise in government fiscal policy and the filmmaking industry.  Certainly our senators didn't invite him to testify and then eagerly promise him quick action just because Mitch is a native son who is now a bigshot celebrity.  Right?

The real issue that our lawmakers should be considering is not whether Michiganders should give filmmakers an even bigger subsidy, but why are we giving them any subsidy at all?  If excessive taxation is stifling the growth of the filmmaking industry in Michigan, then it's stifling the growth of business in general.  If cutting taxes for one industry makes sense to get more of it in Michigan, then cut taxes across the board to get all businesses booming in the Winter-Water-Wonderland.  Yes, taxes need to be cut, but not as special favors for some and nothing at all for most.

Besides, what great boon would filmmaking bring to Michigan?  How much wealth would it create in this state?  How many jobs would be added?  How many tax dollars would be put in the public coffers?  It would be one thing if Michigan became a new hub for the filmmaking industry, instead of merely accommodating itinerant production companies, but then tax breaks aren't going to drive that development.  The fundamentals of what that industry needs to thrive would.  Either it makes sound business sense to make movies and t.v. programs in Michigan or it doesn't -- and taxation and regulation are just one part of that calculus for filmmakers.

Like the bio-tech boondoogle, we shouldn't let the politicians bet our tax dollars on the latest fancy in economic development.  What we should demand of our politicians are policies that get the state and local governments out of the way of businessmen who want to grow businesses and industries that are naturally suited to the many advantages that Michigan offers.  (And those advantages are big ones, which is why our state has been able to carry such a heavy tax and regulatory burden -- but only for so long as the current economic distress demonstrates.)  We don't need them picking which businesses and industries do and do not get the largesse of our tax dollars, especially when they rely upon the advice of such "experts" as Mitch Albom.

SAD SAK

As many of you now know, State Representative Michael Sak (D-Grand Rapids) made a fool out of himself a month ago at the National Governors Association conference up in Traverse City.  It appears that Rep. Sak got liquored up and stumbling drunk, even bumping into a bus once or twice, at the Grand Traverse Resort.  He then tried to bully a state trooper into giving him a ride to his hotel room by telling the cop that he serves on the appropriations committee and so owes his job to him.

Well, there's something to be said for in vino veritas, and so the obnoxious behavior Sak displayed in the absence of sober restraints doesn't speak well of him.  Moreover, whether a happy drunk or an angry drunk, a 47-year-old man who is the speaker pro-tem of the House has no excuse for being a public drunk.  Of course, many Republicans are calling for Sak's head.  Well, no surprise there.  But maybe this is a matter best left for the Democratic leadership and ultimately the voters.

After all, the state trooper was not intimidated by Sak and properly reported the matter to his superiors.  So, no harm, no foul.  Sak apologized and took full responsibility for his actions (even if he obfuscated that by spinning his demands to the trooper as a thumb's up to the state police and later made the trite promise to seek "help" for his drinking problem, as though the devil was in the drink and not himself).  And finally House speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford) did boot Sak from the appropriations committee for the time being.

Let it end there and leave it to the voters come November 2008 should Sak decided to run for office again.

A VIEW FROM THE LEFT - THE MICHIGAN BUDGET BATTLE GOES ON AND ON AND ON...

Here comes a time when regardless of which side you stand, left or right; you must take a step back and look at the big picture of the Michigan budget.   Senate Majority Leader, Broken record Bishop continues to propose more and more cuts – none of which affect his lifestyle or the lifestyles of the wealthiest.  Instead, his cuts proposals dig deeper in to the poorest of our citizenry.  Cuts like:

* More money in the classroom through education reforms.

* Labor and wage concessions from public employees or on public projects when Michigan's unemployment rate exceeds the national rate by more than 20 percent.

* Cost reductions in the three main budget areas growing the most and representing more than 60 percent of the total budget. (Corrections, Medicaid, and Human Services).

The idea of more money in the classroom sounds great.  But will it be at the expense of classroom sizes and a reduction of teachers, or will it be from a reduction in teacher pay and benefits?  Bishop doesn’t really go in to that little detail.  He just leaves it at the catch-all ‘reform’. 

Labor and wage concessions from public employees.   Now I ask you, the reader.   How would you feel if your employer or clients decided that YOU make too much money for the hard work that you do?  After you have budgeted your income for yourself and your family; it would be just fine and dandy for you to simply, do with less”?  Would you just shrug your shoulders and accept this wage cut?  The constant call for wage cuts and concessions equates to a form of coercion.   Employees either concede to wage and benefit cuts, or will be threatened with the cutting of the jobs all together.  The employee has the choice to either lose their job, or take the wage cuts.  Put yourself in their situation.. how would you feel?  Just because we are talking about state employees doesn’t make them or their families any different that you and your family. 

Bishop and company really go aloof in the call for cuts in Medicaid, and Human Services.  Nearly everyone agrees that we need reform and cuts in the Corrections department.  However, advocating for cuts in Medicaid and Human Services is going to hurt those who need the help of others the most.  Cuts in these departments will harm seniors and children the most. 

The constant charge for more and more and more and more cuts is getting tedious.   Bishop’s all-out fear of a tax increase is beginning to reach the extreme Grover Norquist level.  Nearly every economist who has studied Michigan’s economy has agreed that a mix of both cuts and a tax increase are needed to bring Michigan back to prosperity.  Knowing this… we need to find that new tax.  The cuts have already been made time and time again. 

If Bishop and company do not like Granholm’s tax proposal… let them come up with the new tax or tax increase… on top of the previously made cuts.  They are wasting valuable time by politicking and stalling trying to come up with more and more cuts when they know that the “Revenue enhancement” is also needed to bring our budget and our state back to where it needs to be.

Guest Writer –

Jeff Winston
www.michiganliberal.com

A VIEW FROM THE RIGHT - THE MICHIGAN BUDGET BATTLE GOES ON AND ON AND ON...

Following hot on the heels of the action in the Senate last week, the continued intransigence of the  House and the way Governor Granholm became completely unhinged there’s been more and more discussion about just what exactly we CAN cut and just what exactly we CAN reform in Lansing to make sure these budget deficits don’t happen in the future and more importantly, to prevent the radical left from picking our pockets and robbing us blind.

Last week at RightMichigan.com we broke the story and were the first to unveil the Senate GOP reform lists.  This generated some talk in the MSM.  Gongwer referenced Right Michigan and MIRS talked about the lists as well. 

But more than that it generated some discussion on the site and about three metric tons worth of email about other potential savings that didn’t make the Senate list.  We’ve gone over most of the savings that are out there thirty or forty times but it’s always been piecemeal.  A reform here, a chance for savings there.    I figure it’s about time to get them all collected so bloggers, lurkers, readers, voters, residents, citizens, taxpayers, families, legislators, local elected officials and anyone else I may have missed can see the enormity of the potential for real savings in Lansing.

All of that said, this list is certainly NOT exhaustive.  If there’s anything I’ve clearly and obviously missed post it after the story and we’ll keep the list growing.  Any other ideas?  Let everyone know! 

So without further ado, potential savings and reforms to state government that will balance the budget  without job-killing tax increases include:

Reform eligibility and work requirements in welfare to be more in line with our surrounding states and the national average: est. annual savings of $30 million.

Limit welfare to 2 years for able-bodied adults.

Medicaid reform:  est. annual savings of $60 million.

Prison reforms (aside from employee wage concessions): est. annual savings of $200 million from targeted privatization and reforms to address recidivism.

Tether all 65 year old non-violent prisoners and put them out on probation.

Tether non-violent criminals and charge them to be out on a tether.

Seek wage concessions in corrections to bring us inline with the national average instead of releasing felons: est. annual savings $150 million.

Senate GOP Public employee healthcare and retirement reform: est. annual savings of $220 million.

Privatize the public employee pensions:  cash out pension fund and change them to a 401K.

Define contribution for all state employees/teachers.

Change healthcare benefits for state employees 65 years old over to Medicare. </strong>

Consolidate Departments- HAL/DIT/DNR/DEQ: est. annual savings $3 million if consolidated.

Suspend state worker raises for `08:  est. savings $109 million.

Agree to suspend prevailing wage on all public projects when our unemployment rate exceeds 20% of the national average: est. savings of $150 million.

Cut executive travel expenses: est. savings $11 million.

Eliminating barriers to consolidation (SB 550 & 551, Sen. Garcia): Clarifies statutes to provide that when local units of government choose to consolidate or transfer services that the highest wage and benefit package of the two units does not have to be paid.

PA 312 Reforms (Language being drafted):   

--Adhering to time limits for the arbitration and awards process.

--Requiring that the timing of the presentation of the last best offer be moved to the beginning of the process to limit the number of items arbitrated and to facilitate faster resolution.

--Increasing the number and quality of arbitrators through training and a more refined selection process.

--Clarifying what constitutes a local units' "ability to pay".

-- Sell some or all of the state lottery: $750 million.

-- Cut legislative pay 5% (or more).

-- Cut public employee salaries 1% for those under $50K, 2% for those under $100K and 4% for those over $100K.

-- Remove or loosen the cap on Charter Schools to bring private dollars into the education system and force traditional public schools to “sharpen their pencils.”
   
-- Separate research from general support for Universities.

-- Change the funding mechanism for Universities to per-pupil funding like in K-12.
    
-- Privatize non-instructional school services.
 
-- Attract new jobs by passing Right-to-Work legislation.
   
-- Shovel ready permitting:  State, county, local unit permits pre-approved.

-- Consider selling sponsorship rights for public schools to local businesses.

-- Cancel plans to waste $5 million on a new State Police HQ and instead continue to lease property on the MSU campus for $1 a year.

-- Eliminate the Office of the First Gentleman: Savings of $250,000 a year.

-- Reign in state contracts: All told information and technology contracts alone have ballooned by over $1.67 BILLION.

-- Prohibit the state from spending money to Savings of at least $1.35 million annually (based on 2006 numbers).

-- Prohibit union officials from drawing a salary from the taxpayers for doing union business.

--  Part-time legislature with part-time salaries.

-- Reduce legislative staff (The legislators earn enough money to pitch in and help answer constituent requests).

-- Freeze or reduce salaries for legislative staff.

-- Increase health care contribution from legislators and legislative staff.

-- Implement Medicaid Estate Recovery program.

Fresh thinking, eh?  Many of these ideas I like quite a lot.  Note, if you will, that nowhere on the list is a single dollar being cut from K-12 funding nor are the old and infirm being cut from Medicare or Medicaid, insuring that the state won’t cause “people to die.” 

Please add any changes, savings or reforms that are missing in the comments section.  And the next time someone tells you the state absolutely MUST have more cash and that tax hikes are the right thing to do, dig out this list and illuminate things for them.

Guest Writer –

Nick De Leeuw
www.rightmichigan.com

A VIEW FROM THE RIGHT - MICHIGAN'S BUDGET UPDATE

"We are facing a budget shortfall this current fiscal year in excess of $500 million and next year's is in excess of $3 billion. Bottom line: We have a lot of work to do...

"We did this in anticipation of the looming budget crisis and the need for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work immediately."

Speaker Dillon, Journal of the House, Jan. 10, 2007, pgs. 22-23

That was the word from Democrat House Speaker Andy Dillon five months before his chamber decided to take a five-day weekend on Mackinac Island, with the state’s future tax structure and a $2 billion budget whole for FY2008 sitting on the books.

As folks return to work in Lansing this Tuesday, rested and refreshed, no doubt, they still need to roll up their sleeves to get to work.  So let’s start by examining exactly where we stand.

The FY2007 budget deficit, somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million, has finally been resolved.  Good news and bad news.  Custom dictates we examine the bad news first…

Only a small portion, somewhere around 25%, give or take, of the “savings” represents actual cuts to government spending.  The balance was achieved through selling off tobacco settlement dollars and delaying payments to universities.  Basically they cooked the books.  The “fix” wasn’t a solution so much as a stop-gap.  And what it took to achieve what they did… the GOP in the Senate has agreed to allow a vote on a tax increase in 2008, a sign many conservatives have taken as a sign of wobbly knees.

The good news?  When you only have a couple months before the end of a fiscal year you’re not going to be able to make a lot of cuts, period.  The money is almost all gone at that point.  So the fact the Senate GOP was able to make any cuts at all is a good thing.  Even better, while the governor ran around the state claiming she was going to be forced to kill people through Medicaid cuts (her words) and close our kids’ schools (her state superintendent’s words) through draconian school aid cuts if the GOP didn’t kneel at the alter of Baal-Granholm, dark-goddess of the tax increase, renounce their faith in fiscal restraint and embrace a $1.8 billion tax increase, they thumbed their noses at the dollar-bill-green idol and prevented a single pennies worth of said cuts with nary a sign of a tax increase.

What next?  To paraphrase my favorite Tolkein hero, the battle of 07 is finished but the battle for Michigan is about to begin.

First on the docket is a replacement for the dreaded and finally dead Single Business Tax.  The Senate has their BEST plan which small and medium sized businesses like and the House has their MBT which major manufacturers like the Big 3 think is pretty groovy.  Word out of Lansing is that they’re down to one issue, one sticking point in negotiations.  In other words, they’re close.  The Senate GOP has even gone along to get along on this one and backed off their initial insistence that the replacement represent a $300 million net tax cut for Michigan businesses.  Instead, pursuant to the wants and dreams and hopes of every tax-and-spender in the state any SBT replacement will be 100% revenue neutral. 

Good for the bargaining process, bad for Michigan’s economic recovery.

But the real danger on the horizon rests in the FY2008 budget deficit.  It’s shaping up to be in the neighborhood of $2 billion.  For those of you who have a hard time wrapping your mind around big numbers, that’s enough money to buy 200,000,000,000 penny tootsie rolls at the drug store counter.  Wait, that’s another big number. And do they still sell penny tootsie rolls?  But I digress.

How are they looking at fixing this new mess?  The Governor and the House are openly advocating for a $2 billion increase in the state’s income tax, a move that’s sure to send investors, job makers, entrepreneurs and families with options scurrying even faster towards the border.  And the House has the votes to pass any sort of destructive tax hike scheme the governor can cook up (though they never did grant her a vote on that ridiculous, campaign pledge violating “two-penny” service tax plan).

The Senate GOP majority appears, for their part, to be looking at a series of serious reforms.  You can expect the Dems to try to co-opt a few of these so they can paint themselves as serious reformers.  And you can expect their friends in the press to play right along and give them credit for trying to reign in government spending.  Ideas being bandied about in Republican circles include:

*Privatizing the housing / care of 5% of the state’s prison population, a move that could save the state nearly $200 million a year, according to a study by the Rio Grande Foundation.

*Eliminating the MEA’s monopoly on teacher health insurance, a move that could save the state as much as $400 million.

*Preventing state employees from drawing a paycheck and a pension at the same time.

*Eliminating the Office of the First Gentleman, saving a quarter of a million dollars annually.

*Asking state employees making over $100,000 a year to take a 4% pay cut, again, saving millions.

And that’s the short list.

The real worry is that for every item on that list the Democrats grant lip service they’ll try to exact a toll from House and Senate Republicans to the tune of YES votes for tax increases.  GOP members in both chambers are likely never to face a period of greater pressure.  They’re going to be tested.  How will they hold up?  That remains to be seen.  But you’d better believe we’ll be providing as much positive… uh… hmm… encouragement (yeah, that’s the word) as we possibly can to potential turn coats like Ron Jelenik and Valde Garcia and Dick Ball and Mike Nofs and Ed Gaffney. 

It’s one thing to have your Democrats taking shots at Michigan’s future.  It’s another thing entirely when “our own” elected officials stab us in the back. 

However you slice it, it’s going to be an interesting summer in Lansing. 

Lets just hope it’s exciting, not disastrous.

Submitted By Guest Writer:

Nick De Leeuw
www.rightmichigan.com