Tag: racism (page 2)

Alas, the good news seems to stop there.  Raise your hands if you DIDN'T see this one coming... General Motors new restructuring plan, the one being proposed this week by the CEO and the Board of Directors President Obama personally appointed, is going to propose nationalizing the company and ceding complete operational authority to the federal government.  Because that management structure worked so well in the old Soviet Union.

The Detroit News reports:

The U.S. Treasury Department would own a majority of General Motors Corp. and have the right to appoint all of its directors, under the company's turnaround plan unveiled Monday -- the latest sign of the government's growing role in the automaker's restructuring.

The administration also told the Detroit automaker it wouldn't support giving bondholders any more than 10 percent equity in the company.

The bondholders, obviously, aren't happy.  And neither should be the Michiganders working at GM plants or relying on those retirement checks.  Many expect this move is a precursor to a bankruptcy filing and a messy round of fire sales and layoffs.

15 percent unemployment, here we come.  Tomorrowish.  And thanks specifically to the Obama administration.  

By this point we should be used to Democrats behaving badly, though.  The locals here in the Great Lakes State aren't exactly going to win citizenship awards any time soon, either.  Over in Flint we've got the former mayor and potential 2010 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Don Williamson making a liar out of himself and demanding $600,000 in back pay from the city.

Read on...

The Detroit News and everyone else report that GM and Chrysler are expected to meet with President Obama's foreign-car driving "auto task-force" to ask for a fresh $21 BILLION in free cash to avoid the scarlet B.  (That stands for bankruptcy.  I shouldn't have to explain these things to you... if you'd been paying attention... heh.)  This is on top of the $17 BILLION they took from the feds late in 2008 and on top of the BILLIONS they've taken and are hoping to take from the Canadian government.  

As the Presidential administrations get more liberal the requests get bigger and there is still no end in sight.  This has out-of-state GOP lawmakers crying foul and even the staunchest Michigan partisan shouldn't have a tough time understanding why.  When does it end?  Is there a bottom of the barrel?  That's why some are urging a merger or bankruptcy.

There's a real debate to be had here.  On paper, in the math world bankruptcy makes the most sense.  Free the companies from the $73.50 an hour employment costs associated with Big Labor so they can compete with other American auto manufacturing plants paying closer to $25 an hour "all-in."  But in real life?  We're talking about literally hundreds of thousands of Michigan jobs that many believe WILL disappear should the Big 3 become the Big 1 or the Big 2.  On top of the hundreds of thousands that have already disappeared under Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry's clumsily catastrophic impersonation of "leadership."

The worst part is, the plight of the Big 3 is only the tip of Detroit's iceberg.  

Read on...

My morning routine is pretty well established at this point.  About 5:30 I roll out of bed, or off the couch (its comfy and I'm a bachelor, sue me), do the whole wake-up song and dance, brush my teeth, the shower, shave... if I feel like it... spend some time praying and in the Word and then I'll sit down with a bowl of cereal and a glass of OJ and I'll browse the morning's headlines.

By eight or nine I usually have a splitting headache.  I could never figure it out but I finally caught it.  Lately, when I read the news, I grind my teeth.  I'm not talking a little bit but a full bore, gnashing sort of a grind.  

I suppose that means that it is officially painful to read the headlines here in Michigan.  Don't know why I didn't notice it before.  Take this morning for example...

The Detroit News tells us: State jobless rate hits 11.6%

Only gets worse when you read the article and realize that's the worst its been in twenty-five years and is about 150% higher than even the national average.

The Lansing State Journal: GM's future in doubt, auditors say

They're talking bankruptcy here, people.  And yeah, mathematically that might make a lot of sense... heck, that kind of tough medicine might even save ten or twenty-thousand jobs by the time its all said and done but at what price... We're talking surgery without anesthesia type painful.  Yeah, you can do it but boy is it going to hurt.

Then there's the Macomb Daily which opines: New director hopes to give State Fair a great send-off

Yes, the State Fair has been eliminated, scratched from the budget.  And yes, apparently it just received a brand spanking new "director" to the tune of $97,000 a year.  

OK, so that one might be more open-hand-slap-to-forehead than grind-your-teeth but either one will send you screaming for the ibuprofen.  

None of those are nearly as cringe inducing as the latest act by the Democrats on the Detroit City Council, though.  

Read on...

Their statewide slate for 2010 is already shaping up as one of the most extreme, far-left groups of out-of-touch politicians in recent memory.  John Cherry is `proudly' running on a record of failure and futility while their AG candidate, Gretchen Whitmer, makes Fieger-Time look as conservative as John Engler.  The only hope for the slate is potential SoS candidate Janice Winfrey, one of the few Democrats in Detroit with even a modicum of capability.

And now in two of the state's largest cities THIS is what voters are offered in Mayoral races?

The Flint Journal reports on the rapidly growing field of candidates for their leadership post, after it was vacated via the resignation of their last corrupt Democratic Mayor.  The list includes an ultra-liberal former legislator, a local board of education member and a failed former Democratic candidate who it appears only moved to the city to run for Mayor.  Among others.

But Flint looks positively cosmopolitan after reading the Motor City update courtesy of this morning's Detroit News.  

The racist who orchestrated the City Council's decision to reject nearly $300 million in "free money" for Cobo Hall because out-staters would be involved in the project... the same woman who was recently arrested for a bar fight, who called her former colleague Shrek and who made fun of a political opponent's alleged battle with cancer, Congressman John Conyers' wife Monica says she might just run as a write-in candidate.  

"People have asked me," said Conyers, who remains council president at least through the May 5 special election for Detroit mayor. "I haven't said anything. I just listened."

The Call 'Em Out Coalition is encouraging Conyers to run. The Detroit-based organization is known for the "Sambo" awards it bestows on people it feels are selling out Detroit. Representatives of the organization couldn't be reached for comment.

Cobo, for the record, is the "crown jewel of Detroit."  According to the good folks at CEOC.  

"Sambo," by the way, is not a nice word.  The NAACP hasn't buried this one yet, but I'm sure its somewhere on their target list.

If any other politician, running for any other office, anywhere else in Michigan were considering accepting the support and listening to the council of a group that handed out "Sambo" awards, they'd be called on the carpet quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson."  Or in this case, "Jim Crow."

The wife of a Congressman should be held to no less intense a standard.  Just because the woman lives and works and operates in Detroit doesn't give her a pass to participate and legitimize these sorts of vile, repugnant racial politics.

For a "post-racial" America coming off the historic election of our first African-American President, Detroit sure is managing to put on an embarrassing show this week.  One way or the other, Congressman Conyers and his wife are going to tell the bigots and the hate-mongers where they can stick their brand of racism... they'll either justly and publicly denounce them, telling them to stick it where the sun doesn't shine or they'll quietly embrace them without a single word of outrage, making hate mainstream in the Motor City.  

If their Cobo Hall shenanigans are any indication, we probably shouldn't get our hopes up.

And while we little people have to sit at home in an icy, very much global-warming-free climate hoping for the change that Michigan needs in the worst way, the people we elected to deliver it for us here at the state level are out of the state getting ready to attend fancy balls this evening.

Sure, plenty of political hacks and activists and volunteers made their way to the inaugural, and good for them.  This is their day.  They want to self-identify with an incoming administration that has pledged to make its first official act all about making it easier to kill cute little innocent babies via the Freedom of Choice Act, hey, that's between them and their maker.  I know I wouldn't want to self-identify with that particular administration but I have what at least approaches a healthy fear of the almighty.  And karma.  

Particularly frustrating on a personal level that our supposedly pro-life Speaker of the House, Andy Dillon, is away from Michigan attending the festivities, jovially celebrating the arrival of a political climate that will be openly hostile to innocent life.  But he still finds a way to sleep at night and manages to justify each of his two faces and that's worthy of a round of applause.

(Pictured at right are Dillon with lefty political consultant and radio personality Kerry Ebersole.  Apparently this one popped up on Facebook with a headline indicating it was taken yesterday in DC.)

Of course, he's not the only prominent lefty who's taken the opportunity to abandon the ship here in Michigan to go party it up instead.  The Associated Press highlights the different approaches to potential state stimulus cash headed this direction via massive new deficit spending by congressional Democrats. The most obvious difference is that our local lefties want to use the cash to cover up their own budgeting mistakes by erasing red ink while Republican leaders in the House want instead to apply the cash, if it has to come, the way it seems to be intended, to sponsor work projects and give some of unemployed families a chance at a paycheck.  Oh, and the Republicans are actually here in-state working on fixing our problems.

Read on...