For some reason, it came back to me on the way home from a County Commission meeting this evening, after a vote to create a Macomb County Art Institute Authority, which ostensibly will create a tax to go on the earliest ballot possible.

Now, you may be asking yourself: What does Macomb County have even remotely to do with an Art Museum in another county.

That's the gag!

Most of us were asking that very same question just one week ago.

But the makings of this were way earlier than that.

Let's jump into the DMC-12 and go back to the waning days of the last session of the Michigan Legislature.

Jennifer Granholm was packing her bags and dreaming happy thoughts about returning to Berkley.

Rick Snyder was busy thinking about how he can relentlessly and positively ram an income and pension tax hike down Michiganian's throats (Hmmmmmmm...use a pejorative term and call us Michigander's to throw us off?).

Senate Republicans were <strike>selling their souls</strike> capitulating their last shred of integrity (Thank you, Mike Bishop!), by indulging democrats, especially one Sen. Samuel Thomas of Detroit.

One important bill to note of his from that time was Senate Bill 1578 of 2010 creating a revenue generating authority that directly benefited a Detroit-based entity, specifically the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was signed into law by Gov. Granholm during the last days of her reign and promptly forgotten.

Or, so we thought.

Democrats eager to take and spend other people's money (much like children and criminals) copy and pasted P.A. 296 of 2010 into their respective county hoppers and got the ball rolling to bring in some more dough.

How much, you may ask?

Well, in Macomb County, it's projected to collect approximately $3-million. In Oakland County (which strangely has L. Brooks Patterson's support): $11-million. And finally, in Wayne County (home of the DIA): $9-million.

That's per year, by the way.

So the DIA gets at least $230-million to play around with no strings attached.

Must be nice.

The real kicker here is that this almost fell by the wayside.

Even though the bill passed at the Wayne County Board of Commissioners Meeting last month, the original bill in Macomb County died in committee 4-4 several days ago.

Then, after some MAJOR, industrial-strength arm-twisting by the DIA and its supporters, one of the "no" votes, Commissioner Smith, changed his vote to a "yes".

As if the DIA bumper stickers on the cars in the parking lot and lapel pins wasn't a dead giveaway, those same supporters packed the board room again tonight and stumped even more in support of the tax, er I mean, Macomb Art Authority.

So, in the end, how did they fare?

Here's the breakdown:

Toni Moceri (D)/District 1 - Yes
Marvin E. Sauger (D)/District 2 - Yes
Phillip A. DiMaria (D)/District 3 - Yes
David Flynn (D)/District 4 - Yes
Ray Gralewski (R)/District 5 - No
James L. Carabelli (R)/District 6 - No
Don Brown (R)/District 7 - No
Kathy D. Vosburg (R)/District 8 - Yes
Fred Miller (D)/District 9 - Yes
Roland Fraschetti (R)/District 10 - No
Kathy Tocco (D)/District 11 - Yes
Bob Smith (D)/District 12 - Yes
Joe Sabatini (R)/District 13 - No

8-5 Motion passed.