Tag: Charter

Now, we have another charter that has beached, this time in the city of Detroit with a spinoff in the Ingham County Circuit Court.  It's the Detroit City Charter, but this time, instead of the hapless Gilligan, we have Krystal Crittendon.  Like the original series, this comedy seems destined to be with us for awhile.

You know the story by now.  In a nutshell, the city and the state of Michigan signed a consent agreement in an 11th hour effort to avoid an emergency financial manager.  As its implementation neared, Crittendon, the city's chief lawyer, filed a lawsuit in the Ingham County Circuit Court, claiming that the agreement is unenforceable because the city Charter prohibits agreements between the city and any entity that owes the city money.  Crittendon alleges that, because the state owes the city money for past revenue sharing and other items, the agreement cannot be enforced.  In response, the state is threatening to withhold $80 million in revenue sharing, which will send the city spiraling into insolvency.

It's important to note that neither the city council nor the mayor authorized or directed Crittendon to file this lawsuit.  She filed on her own, claiming that the city Charter imposes on her not only the responsibility, but the obligation to do so.  This line -- that the Charter gives her not just the authority to file but makes her file -- has been repeated in the press, but is it true?

The lefties have it wrong yet again.

Gross Pointe schools either do not want "certain elements" from other school districts in their schools or they are ignorant of the needs of kids getting shafted in certain areas throughout the state. From the Oakland Press:

"My personal point of view is when you take away local control of education, you essentially steal a community's destiny," board president John Steininger said.

"If your school board cannot control its boundaries and who is allowed to attend your schools, there just isn't much left that Lansing can't determine," Bledsoe said. "The school board is left to hire and fire the superintendent and that's about it."

Given some recent examples of charter school performance versus public school performance.

The remainder of the scores are identical.  Follow the image to a more complete representation. (PDF)

I have suggested before that schools be contracted out for the sake of the children.  Don't teach the kids? Don't get paid.

"The best way for Detroit to clean up that mess, is to kick ALL the teachers, employees, and management in the Detroit schools to the curb.  Then open contracts and bidding for the purchase or rental of the school buildings and resources."

Its not the lack of material that causes this, but rather a question of "where should I start?"  An article that has been written and re-written by me for the last month is one that addresses the Detroit schools problem.  Namely its inability to educate the kids, and then do so within a particular financial framework.

Something we outstaters call a budget.

PJ TV has a video released today worth watching.  from the introduction:

Detroit has been controlled by liberals for years, but close to half of the people living there are functionally illiterate. Even more surprisingly, Detroit had a Public School Board President who had difficulty writing coherently.

Of course one might think this is old news as the 'old news' cycle goes.  One might have been banging one's head too long over Otis' written word issues.  Detroit STILL has a failed system.  It has a new emergency manager in who thinks carefully slicing away with a scalpel is the cure for an unbelievably cancerous patient, when all that will be accomplished is a painful biopsy at best.

Depends, apparently, on whether or not McFly is a Michigan politician.  And if he is, then no, no one is home.

See, the thing about experience, is it is pretty darn worthless if one fails to learn anything from it.  That's what growth and progress are all about, but those appear to be foreign concepts to this state's elected Lefties.

Take the Whitehall City Council.  Please.  (I know.  Groan.)  According to the Muskegon Chronicle, the liberal panel just approved a massive new tax break for a local company specifically because they're counting on it "retaining" ten jobs.

City council members on Tuesday granted a 50 percent tax break on $5 million in new equipment and machinery Acutex Division of Hilite Industries will add as part of the expansion.

In a sign of the times, the company said it needed the 12-year tax break to retain -- and not create -- 10 full-time jobs.

That's all well and good and swell squared on its face.  Nice of the liberals on the Council (it was a unanimous vote) to admit that tax cuts have a positive effect on employment.  Not surprisingly, though, other businesses around Muskegon are wondering where their tax breaks are.  

Experience would seem to dictate that a lower tax burden will solidify or improve the job market.  Empirical evidence seems to back up the anecdotal, too.  So daydream what Muskegon's job market might look like if the City were to cut ALL business taxes by 50 percent.  Imagine what Michigan's might look like if the state were to simply repeal that $1.2 billion job-killing Michigan Business Tax surcharge!  

Talk about an economic stimulus.  And talk about needing it.  The Associated Press highlighted this weekend yet another category where the Great Lakes State is falling farther, faster than anyone else in the country:

(Read on...)