A Major Hat Tip is offered with appreciation, to our Upper Peninsula's Rep. Ed McBroom for cutting through the haze, uncertainty and false assumptions swirling around House Concurrent Resolution 011, which for most intents and purposes, has the force of law while allowing the wet wool blanket of tyranny to be thrown over the legislative process, and effectively turn the lights out on transparency, citizen oversight, and accountability.

So, thanks to Ed, I can set the record straight on Common Core in Michigan and exactly what happened in the State House.

Our State Constitution has specific language that states any bill must be voted on in a manner which allows the public to view if, and how, our individual legislators voted on it.

Thanks to Kevin Rex Heine's efforts to bring those pertinent sections of the Constitution to light, I was happy to inaccurately assume the Common Core voice votes in both the House and Senate were null and void.

Unfortunately, it appears they were not, because resolutions don't appear to be treated the same as bills are constitutionally, and Common Core will proceed in Michigan despite widespread opposition from the RNC platform, the last convention of GOP delegates and their resolution against it during February's Lansing State Convention, and thousands of concerned citizen phone calls and email messages from every single district in the state.

Our House- at least it used to be, allowed the electronic board technology and the vote buttons on each legislator's desk in the chamber to be used to count the votes, but in order to allow the cloak of secrecy to prevail, along with some legislator's desire to remain unaccountable for their intentional treachery- the votes WERE NOT RECORDED for their constituents review.

I heard some threats of pursuing this with a civil suit, but from what I've seen from our State Supreme Court, they're pretty consistent on following the letter of the law- most of the time anyways, and I don't like the odds of success in going through the expensive and time-consuming legal system.

So where does this leave us?

A handful of years ago, the legislature was the playground of the special interests and their lobbyists. The TEA Party was born, our citizens got proactive, and the legislature got attentive.

Since then, our activists have gotten more politically astute, more politically active, and more effective. Simultaneously, the legislature has gotten bolder, more demanding of special interest financial support for their access to our tax dollars, and more openly defiant and disrespectful as a result.

The state budget has gone up 5 billions of tax dollars since the TEA Party and their 2010 election efforts gave King Rick a super majority in the Senate, and reversed a Democrat majority in the House. And every single penny of it, that was wasted, spent frivolously, as well as smartly- was taken from the citizens still struggling to recover from a lost decade.

And BTW, those federal dollars coming back to us are no different.

Party membership and allegiance no longer is respected or honored- merely expected and constantly demanded.

Enjoy the ride, Lansing- because your days of unfettered play with the money, freedom, and lives of Michigan citizens and businesses are numbered.

From my perspective, gridlock in Lansing is goal number 1, and my only hope and protection against a power-lusting, constantly growing government planting it's largesse firmly on the shoulders of this great state.

$50 BILLION a year, and you can't even dedicate an appropriate portion of it to properly and prudently maintain our road system?

Rick Snyder and other Republican conspirators of like mind- you're on your own. You can't win without me and mine, and we all know it.

The lame duck is now in the oven. And it smells Delicious!