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Prediction: The Dems will claim their tax-shift is a repeal and many in the MSM will buy itBy Nick, Section News
As reported here on Right Michigan yesterday afternoon, the mainstream media is abuzz this morning with reports about the potential for a vote to repeal and / or replace the Democrats' job killing $613+ million sales tax on services. Nothing seems to have changed in the later hours yesterday.
The Senate voted yesterday to toss out the tax, period, and did not specify a need to replace it. That leaves the process open for a variety of fixes including the House GOP cuts which would reduce big-government spending beyond the $613 million threshold. The Democrats in the House are taking a different track. The Associated Press reports:
Twenty-one Republicans who control the Senate and two Democrats supported the repeal as a step forward. But most Democrats said they couldn't back the bill unless the revenue is replaced. Granholm has taken the same position.
Businesses say the tax is confusing, would make Michigan a less attractive place to do business and is unfair because it taxes some services but not others. Andy Dillon's also been on record stating that it's necessary to find a full replacement. The entire party (outside of Glenn Anderson in the Senate who voted against the tax in the first place) is determined to make sure the state coffers don't take a hit. Jobs lost? People laid off? No big deal, just as long as Lansing gets theirs. Which brings us to today. The House will likely follow on yesterday's Senate action and vote to change the tax but here's a warning... they'll refer to it constantly as a "repeal" of the unpopular tax. They'll drop the word "repeal" into their statements to the press. They'll use the word "repeal" prominently in their press releases. They'll go on the radio and drop it into every other sentence. And you can expect the MSM to lap it up quickly and enthusiastically. They've been so desperate for their own party to move past the public relations nightmare of the biggest tax hike in the history of the state that I'd be willing to make a friendly wager that we'll see Op-Eds praising the Democrats up one side and down the other for acting to "save jobs" or some such malarchy. Calling it a "repeal" may be good politics and it may even be definitionally correct in Lansing but out here in the real world when you decide not to take away $613 million from businesses A, B and C but then instead take $613 million from businesses X, Y and Z you haven't repealed anything. All you've done is played accounting gimmicks and games. Do you think anyone looked at GM's $39 BILLION accounting shift this week and said, oh, hey, no big deal... they just shifted some money around! No. Because GM exists in the real world. Read on...
And when you take a $39 BILLION loss and have to play accounting games to keep your company solvent it's bad news. Period.
The FREEP's Tom Walsh is consistently one of the Governor's biggest boosters in the MSM and he understands that:
The rest of GM's numbers posted Wednesday were plenty sobering, showing that GM, ostensibly the healthiest of the Detroit Three automakers, is:
Of course, I'm still waiting for someone like Tom Walsh to put two and two together and to ask Governor Granholm just exactly how she can support Hillary Clinton when the New York Senator is, in essence, advocating for a $100 BILLION CAFE tax that would be imposed on only three companies in the United States... Ford, Chrysler and GM. I'm pretty well resigned to the fact that no one in the press is willing to ask the governor any tough questions these days. The Dems have really been taking it in the court of public opinion thanks to their job killing tax hikes and it'd be silly to expect a giant liberal constituency like the MSM to pile on their anointed and heralded leader. That's not to say there isn't ANY hope. I do derive a little from reading Kim Kozlowski's latest article in the Detroit News. A couple weeks ago she wrote one of the most frustratingly biased "news" articles in recent memory (you can find the discussion here). Well, Ms. Kozlowski is back with a fresh article from her stem cell beat this morning and I'm happy to report that she actually, well, reported! The House Judiciary Committee spent hours and hours yesterday taking testimony from opponents and proponents of embryonic stem cell research and the Detroit News brings us some of the details:
"Do scientists truly believe my Frank could have better served humanity dissected, destroyed and ultimately injected into someone's spine?" said Stacy Giesen of Marshall...
Ann Stephenson, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and relies on a wheelchair, said it's immoral.
"There is nothing I want more than to be able to live a normal, functional life," said Stephenson, of Lansing. "But not at the cost of someone else's life." All told we had six "neutral" paragraphs, four reporting the thoughts and opinions of opponents and four reporting the thoughts and opinions of proponents. I could nitpick about some of the wording in the "neutral" paragraphs and about the overall word counts in the others but I won't. In the end what we had was a news story that reported the news and addressed the tough issues. Novel idea. Now if only we can get a few of Ms. Kozlowski's colleagues to take that approach in their handling of the Democrats in Lansing.
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Prediction: The Dems will claim their tax-shift is a repeal and many in the MSM will buy it | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
Prediction: The Dems will claim their tax-shift is a repeal and many in the MSM will buy it | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
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 Related Links+ here+ House GOP cuts + Associated Press + Steven Bieda, D-Warren + FREEP's + here [2] + Detroit News + Also by Nick |
