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    Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?

    Raise the curtain.

    Building common ground between cats and dogs


    By Theblogprof, Section News
    Posted on Tue Feb 24, 2009 at 09:51:24 AM EST
    Tags: coal, Comcast, energy, Granholm, insurance, MEA (all tags)

    (Autobots and Decepticons are magic words. Anytime anyone works them into any blogpost you'll automatically get front-paged. Just so we're clear. --Nick) Cross-posted at theblogprof

    Decepticons working with autobots. Vorlons with shadows. Harkonnen with Atreides. Romulans with Klingons. Cats with dogs. I don't know - doesn't sound right. But such is the suggestion from the Macomb Daily. In the opinion piece, the MD says

    Granholm outlined some very bold and aggressive projects she would like the state to embark on as she painted a bright future for Michigan in her recent State of the State speech.
    Bold and aggressive? Did I miss something? I'm pretty sure I just wrote a few pieces recently about Granholm and, with good reason, I would describe her projects as timid and passive. In fact, I just wrote a piece yesterday entitled Granholm, 'no-brainers' and leadership, where I drew comparisons between her leadership and that of Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. It was not pretty. In yet another prior post, I pointed out this opinion by Scott Stoecker on his blog:

    Aunt Jenny, working harder than she's ever worked to balance the budget, announces cuts to her beloved education system. Then, shazaam! President B. Hussein Obama's stimulus plan forbid cuts to education.

    If I were a distrusting kind of guy, I would say that Aunt Jenny knew she was getting this money from the feds all along so she could act like the tough-minded budget cutter. It makes her look like she's actually working, and yet her lackeys at the MEA don't suffer any consequences.

    If I were not the trusting sort, of course.

    Of course. Sound bold and aggressive now? How about the fact that the structural budgetary problems simply don't get fixed. Like - at all! A big chunk of the budget hole this year will simply be plugged with stimulus bondo. That's about it. Next year too. So whoever takes over after 2010 is going to be in a world of hurt because of the kick-the-can mentality of the current administration. Not good. Not bold. Not aggressive.

    Read more...

    In any case, the article proceeds:

    But for the bright future to become a reality, our leaders in Lansing must compromise and reach agreement on many critical issues, predominantly in respect to finances.
    Compromise. How'd that work out last time? You know - when we had that ginormous budget hole that Granholm wanted fixed with "enhancing revenues," a.k.a. taxes. $1.7 billion worth. If memory serves, that tax boondoggle was supposed to permanently solve our budget problems. So much for that. Where was the call for compromise then? The only compromise coming from Democrats was "you're with us or against us." "Vote on the things that we want." In essence, it has been an attitude of unilateral bipartisanship similar to what is happening on the national level these days. That tax boongoggle foisted upon the Michigan citizens was done is spite of common-sense recommendations by the Macinac Center for Public Policy which had outlines ways of saving $1.9 billion without raises taxes at all. Good ideas - meet deaf ears. Deaf ears - good ideas. The Macomb Daily continues:
    The governor laid out an agenda that called for trimming the size of state government, reducing legislative pay, freezing insurance rates and college tuition, stopping coal plants and making a hefty investment in renewable energy.
    Let me focus on a few of these (insurance and coal) for the sake of brevity. I'm all for reducing the size of government, but freezing insurance rates? Not long ago, I made a post called Macomb Daily: Insurance agents go on defense, where I pointed out that the insurance industry is one of the few in the state that is growing. In fact, here was one snippet that I pointed out:
    Currently, insurance represents one of the few growing industries in Michigan, employing more than 111,000 people who work for, or whose jobs are dependent upon, 1,557 insurance companies across the state. For an administration that has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the last 6 years, maybe it's not a good idea to go after "one of the few growing industries in Michigan?" Maybe just lay off of it? Maybe??? Hello? Bueller???
    That's a LOT of jobs. I hope the Governor doesn't get wind of Comcast and how well its doing in the state either. From the Muskegon Times via MLive:
    Even with the poor economy and the dismantling of Michigan's auto industry, Comcast continues to hold its customer base, according to Patrick Paterno, director of communications for the company in Michigan. With $2 billion spent on upgrading its Michigan systems in the past decade, Paterno said Comcast is in the state to stay.
    Don't tell the administration! It seems that any business prospering in the state must do so by rolling their customers. That's not fair, and the Governor intends to fix it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we live in Bizarro World. A world where prosperity is punished, while sloth is rewarded.

    Related to this is coal. Incidentally, I wrote a piece just the other day (one in a chain in the last few weeks - I guess I'm a "chain writer," two packs a day and still going...) on the subject (The Michigan Coal Stimulus) where I had this to say:

    ...here we have a private company willing to invest $2 billion in Michigan, with no stings attached (unlike the "stimulus"), putting Michigan moms and dads to work to fix a crumbling infrastructure - almost a full third of what we are to be getting from porulus. In fact, if you consider the other licences applied for to build modern, cleaner coal power plants in the State, there's more "stimulus" money there than porkulus offers, won't put our children and grandchildren in debt, won't add to the national deficit, won't cause inflation to limit economic growth, and it will be home-grown right here in Michigan. Moreover, the power plant to be built in Bay City is an "advanced supercritical pulverized clean coal plant." That's right - much better for the environment than the old dilapidated plants that pump out power for our homes now. This is a win-win for consumers in this great State.
    Thus, as with the insurance industry, hold onto your rear end but don't hold your breath. The power generation industry wants to modernize and get cleaner in Michigan. Granholm's response? No. The insurance industry is growing in this state. The Governor's response? They must be stopped! Bizarro World indeed.

    Now, it appears that the Republican majority in the MI Senate is opposed to this lunacy. The Macomb Daily's response? Find "common ground." That common ground? Government cuts. Well - duh! Haven't the Republicans been saying this for some years now? The only reason this is even coming out of the Governor's office is because there is simply no other choice this time. She has spent the last 6 years inflating the government at a time of recession. Time to pay the piper.

    That being said, let's just say that the Dems and Republicans can get on the same page about how to reduce the size of government. How does this translate to freezing insurance rates and killing the power generation industry in this state? The Macomb Daily believes that if you can find commonality for one solution, everything else will come together, Democrats and Republicans will be holding hands in Lansing singing Kumbaya, dogs will get along with cats. The Macomb Daily ends their piece with this:

    Certainly, after all these years of the tug of war between the Democrats and Republicans, everyone's arms have to be getting tired.
    No. No they're not. I was at the MI Republican convention this past Saturday, and I can tell you there is plenty of energy out there to right the ship. Plenty. After living through these last 6 years myself, mine are not tired either. All of us on the right side of the isle are ready, willing and enthusiastic about fighting the good fight. And we will do just that!
    < Michigan Tea Party | A Representative Michigan should NOT be proud of >


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    Wasted youth (none / 0) (#2)
    by Theblogprof on Tue Feb 24, 2009 at 10:32:34 AM EST
    "Autobots and Decepticons are magic words. Anytime anyone works them into any blogpost you'll automatically get front-paged. Just so we're clear. --Nick"

    Looks like all my years of wasted youth are paying dividends after all...

    Harkonen working with Atreides (none / 0) (#3)
    by corwin256 on Tue Feb 24, 2009 at 12:25:58 PM EST
    Thank you so much for the Dune reference!

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