Tag: Hypocrite

"We have a tremendously talented and skilled workforce. We're very productive in this state." - Michigan House Speaker (and Gubernatorial Candidate) Andy Dillon

"Rescuing troubled companies and saving Michigan jobs." Sounds like a sure fire message you want to spread in a state mired in its own depression.

As it turns out, it's easier said than done.

I think the same principle translates pretty well to the legislature where our elected officials spend tax dollars on the items, people and programs they believe are important while holding back from items they view as less important.  

Too often these days, though, doing a little case study of Michigan electeds will leave a guy scratching his head, confused and disappointed.

Exhibit A: Democratic Attorney General candidate Gretchen Whitmer and her state Senate colleagues.

Several weeks ago Whitmer and the Senate Dems voted to approve the Granholm-Cherry executive order firing 100 state troopers, taking freshly trained and hired law enforcement officers off the streets and away from our neighborhoods.  The move, they told us, was the only way the state could possibly save $1.7 million.

Turns out that wasn't quite the whole truth.  This Tuesday Whitmer and team voted AGAINST cutting the legislature's budget by $2.5 million, a move that would have saved more taxpayer cash annually than the trooper cuts, further cutting into that nasty deficit.  Better to spend the cash themselves... on themselves... than on keeping cops on the street.

And as ugly and selfish a move as that was they topped themselves in session on Thursday.

We've been covering the Michigan State Police boondoggle literally for years. From Representative Arlan Meekhof's update earlier this week to our examination of the original appropriation back in June of 2007, we've been on top of the story.

By way of reminder, the Michigan State Police currently lease their headquarters in East Lansing for the grand total of $1 a year.  One dollar.  

The Michigan State Police do NOT want to move.  They've said so.  Explicitly.

So, obviously, the only thing for the Granholm-Cherry administration to do was to approve a $117 million plan to build a new MSP headquarters in downtown Lansing.  And just to sweeten the pot, they made sure that A) the new building wouldn't be large enough to house all of the MSP operations, necessitating additional facilities, B) made sure there was a massive yearly lease to replace that all-together-too-reasonable $1 rate and C) made sure Democrat sugar daddy Joel Ferguson, a long-time ultra high dollar donor to Democratic candidates and causes and a personal friend of Governor Granholm got the contract to do the development and rake in the taxpayer cash.

Attorney General Mike Cox this week informed the legislature that legally they could get out of the entire brain dead scheme if they simply pulled back the funding.  Yesterday the Senate voted to do just that.  

The GOP Majority amended the State Police budget, SB 253, to strip funding for the "triangle project."  Gretchen Whitmer and her Senate Dem colleagues then voted to protect their donor's payday by attempting to strip the amendment that killed the funding.  They opted to waste $117 million on a new building MSP doesn't want after firing 100 of the men and women for whom it was supposedly being built.

Thankfully their attempts failed and the GOP amendment stuck.

Meanwhile, Troopers across the state are expected in the next few days to vote to dramatically cut their own pay to save their fellow troopers' jobs. Their hearts are unquestionably in the right place.  In an amazing place.  

Only wish the same could be said of Gretchen Whitmer.

Given the opportunity yesterday to do just that, Whitmer joined fifteen of her Democratic colleagues and voted NO.  Worse than the simple fact that Whitmer and the Dems voted against right-sizing the legislature's budget is the fact that their vote came only a couple of weeks after they approved, en masse and on record, the Granholm-Cherry administration's decision to fire 100 state troopers.

The General Government appropriations bill, Senate Bill 245, was approved Tuesday on a Party line vote.  Each of the Republicans present and voting approved a $2.5 million annual cut to the Senate's budget while each of the Democrats voted against it.  

By way of comparison, it's worth noting that the EO firing 100 state troopers represented a total cut of $1.7 million.  In other words, the Democrats' Attorney General candidate and the rest of the big-government  Senate Left could have kept 100 law enforcement officers on the street protecting our neighborhoods, cut their own budgets and still saved taxpayers an additional $800,000 each year.

But that isn't what they did.  I mean, fighting crime, saving jobs and supporting law enforcement is important.  Apparently it just isn't as important as protecting the status quo when it comes to office allotments.  

Tells you a thing or two about Whitmer's priorities and her sincerity when she's on the stump... errr... making comments on the Senate floor.  And this is the woman who wants to be the state's top law enforcement official?