Or, the “Right Michigan Solution for Fixing Michigan Roads”.
A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Soon enough, you’ve got the makings of a pretty good framework to work within.
If you’re really a Conservative, that is.
If not…well click below for more.
{Continued below the fold}
(12)Nuh Uh.
(0)Conservative Kevin Jackson highlighted the 2015 MiCPAC this past Saturday
Want to have some fun?
We were lucky to have had Kevin Jackson speak to the conferees at the May 16 2015 MiCPAC in Troy. He lived up to the hype with a lively presentation. A heck of a nice guy so articulate that I hardly noticed he was short.
Shorter than me anyhow.
Enjoy!
(7)Nuh Uh.(1)RightMi.com readers can rest easy knowing THIS guy won't ever back down.
Appearing at the May 16, 2015 MiCPAC, Michigan’s RNC Committeeman Dave Agema spoke to conferees. This year’s event was held in Troy.
The MiCPAC event is held annually by the Michigan Conservative Union.
Enjoy.
(19)Nuh Uh.(2)Current Michigan State Representative challenges the likely outcome of a current supreme court case.
Gary Glenn talks about the case before the United States Supreme Court at the 2015 MiCPAC Saturday.
(22)Nuh Uh.(3)Spectacular Death in Michigan No Bar to Success in Washington
While Michiganders were being entertained and infuriated by the lies of Proposal 1 proponents, few of us noticed that the very same roads funding strife is reaching a crescendo in Washington. The Federal Highway Trust Fund spends about $ 50 billion dollars on ‘transportation’ across the U.S.A. each year. Michigan received $ 1.39 billion from the HTF in Fiscal Year 2014 for new construction of roads and bridges, along with mass transit activities. As a point of reference, Michigan spent an additional $ 2 billion of funds raised within the state for the same ‘transportation’ purposes. The Federal HTF paid for 40.9% of Michigan ‘transportation’ spending in FY 2014.
Funded in the past by an $ 0.184 per gallon Federal gasoline tax ($ 0.244 per gallon on diesel fuel), the Highway Trust Fund’s traditional fuel tax revenues have fallen to about $ 34 billion. The Federal government has been supplementing the Highway Trust Fund from general deficit spending revenues since 2008. In Fiscal Year 2014, the Federal government supplemented the Highway Trust Fund with $ 11 billion in general revenues.
How did this happen?
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)First off, I’d just like to thank those who have sent in suggestions so far for “The Right Michigan Solution for Fixing Michigan Roads” (and yes, I have gotten a few already). I’ve got an update that I like to pass along after the fold.
And for the record, the title of this post isn’t referring to these “poor” schemps.
{More below the fold}
(4)Nuh Uh.(0)You people in Lansing are supposed to be Conservatives. Why not try acting like a Conservative for a change?
There is an axiom that everyone has probably heard numerous times already that goes something like this: “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
A friend of mine would add in a second line to that to make it a little bit more interesting…”Those who fail to learn the lesson of history correctly, well they are just plain doomed.”
It strongly looks like were seeing that second line play out here in Michigan after the defeat of Proposal 1.
This time around, though, it doesn’t have to end that way.
{More after the fold}
(7)Nuh Uh.(1)A Useful Political Intelligence Tool for Political Junkies
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has created a free, interactive smartphone app which tracks state and federal bills pending floor action and your legislators’ votes.on those bills. This useful app is called VoteSpotter and has has been debugged to the point where it works well. There are only about 1,000 Android users of this app presently, but it is growing in popularity. It is available from both the Google PlayStore and the Apple IOS App Store.
You enter your voting address and the program determines your state and federal representatives from its database. Then you receive regular notifications of impending legislation soon to be voted upon by those legislators, described in plain English. You can then contact your legislator on any legislation for which you receive a notification, indicate your preference before the vote, and then concur or disagree with your legislator after the vote. Legislators have access to the ‘polls’, but not your individual information unless you elect to send them an email through the program.
Mackinac Center is now in the process of extending this application beyond the State of Michigan.
(7)Nuh Uh.(1)Join Conservatives from across the state at the Michigan Conservative Action Conference in Troy. <- Get your tickets today.
(8)Nuh Uh.(2)Spending Money Is Not Leadership
Kwame’s and Bobbie’s ‘Bridge of Bucks’ over Telegraph Road
Now that Michigan voters have mercilessly dispatched Proposal 1 to the garbage can of history, lets talk a bit about the philosophy of a truly effective plan to get Michigan’s roads and bridges up to par. This will provide a proper foundation for developing a ‘Plan B’ which will actually improve Michigan’s roads and bridges, and be acceptable to the population as well.
The underlying premise of Proposal 1 was that the only action required to fix up Michigan’s roads and bridges was injecting big money into the Michigan Transportation Fund. The depraved philosophy of modern American government. Not true and the voters knew it. But Michigan’s power elite believed that opposition could be neutralized by icing a pile of feces with chocolate frosting. Didn’t work despite a lavish $ 10 million effort.
The condition of Michigan’s roads and bridges has only a casual relationship with the funds available in the MTF. In 2014, 11% of MTF funds were siphoned off by various State of Michigan Departments in the form of charge backs for ‘services’ rendered to the MTF, as well as priority grants that have little to do with roads and bridges. Debt service is also a component of this 11%, but that is effectively a payment for previous time preferences of bureaucrats and politicians. Then 9.5% of the remainder was diverted to the Comprehensive Transportation Fund for mass transit. Finally, the MTF was partitioned amongst the State Trunkline Fund (36%), county road agencies (34.6%), and cities (19.8%). In each partition, further funds are siphoned off by charge backs, pension payments, and OPEBs. What’s left for the roads is more a function of politicians and bureaucrats preferences at every level than the amount of money front loaded into the MTF.
So how do we proceed? First develop a philosophy to frame and inform the ‘Plan B’ debate. After the fold.
(10)Nuh Uh.(0)
