Tag: unemployment (page 3)

With a state budget $1.8 billion in the red and federal stimulus cash disappearing faster than Vanilla Ice (and leaving just as unpleasant a memory) I'm willing to listen to just about any kind of plan to shake up the status quo in Lansing.  

When the Michigan Education Association lambasted Dillon I was that much more prone to agree with the man.  When Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Cox several days ago supportively praised Dillon's concept I became that much more encouraged by the possibility of bipartisan cooperation and real "change."

This morning, personally, I'm chalking up one more notch on the PRO side of the ledger... spite.  Pure, unadulterated, spite.  

Booth Newspapers reported late yesterday that Governor Jennifer Granholm hates Dillon's idea because, apparently, it is a difficult political issue.  And if that doesn't make you want to find the nearest Granholm apologist and shake him firmly you're a better, more balanced person than me.

"The concern that I have is that this plan is not something that would save money in the budget year we are negotiating or the budget year afterward," Granholm said. "The timing of this is challenging."

Um, hello?  McFly?  McFlyyyy?  Anybody home McFly?  A $1.8 billion CHRONIC budget deficit, a nation's worst 15.2 percent unemployment rate and already a half-million one-time-residents exported to other states... those issues are challenging.  "Timing" has got freaking nothing on the economy the Governor, her number two John Cherry and Dillon himself have done their best over the last half-decade to permanently cripple.  

The "timing is challenging?"  Are you kidding me?  Madame Governor... look around this state!  You're worried that the timing is challenging?  The timing is challenging.  Lamest excuses in the history of lame excuses.  Add that one to the lame excuse hall of fame right alongside "the dog ate my homework" and "I have to wash my hair."

Read on...

But you know what they say... the more things change the more they stay the same.  

Lest you lose your footing, your grip on reality or your general intellectual equilibrium, there is evidence in fish-wraps across the state today that things aren't as topsy-turvy as the MEA / Dillon spat might indicate, and what good is a site like Right Michigan if we don't keep you grounded in reality?  

Not that reality is eeeeveryone's strong suit, though, but isn't that about what we've come to expect from paper's like the Ivory Tower?  The state's leading Lefty pub carries an AP story with an interesting headline that proclaims "Teenagers may receive pay raise this week."

Michigan teenagers who have jobs might see a pay raise this week.

Michigan's subminimum wage, a wage paid to employees younger than 18, will jump from $6.55 to $7.25 when the federal minimum wage rises to that rate on Friday.

And they're right, technically, though I couldn't help but be carried away to the bygone days of the Cold War when a two-car automobile race between the Soviets and the United States once produced a Moscow Headline proclaiming- "Soviets finish second, Americans second to last."

Yes.  Some teenagers might get a pay raise this week as the government introduces another bureaucratic regulation on job makers across the country, even here in a state where job makers have become an endangered species. Alas, many teenagers will also get a pretty serious pay reduction this week when their bosses crunch the numbers and decided instead of paying the higher wage they'll do without the seasonal help the rest of the way.

And as teenagers across the state find their jobs no longer exist, their parents back at home suddenly find themselves dealing with skyrocketing prices on their monthly utility bill, thanks in large part to the MEA's whipping boy, Andy Dillon.  The Grand Rapids Press reports on new, and unstoppable, rate hikes headed our way from Consumers and DTE.

Read on...

The same day we learned that Michigan's economy, in the third year of his "leadership" of the state House, has reached a devastating 15.2 percent unemployment rate and that 740,000 Michiganders are officially jobless, the ugliest number since they started keeping the statistic in 1976, Dillon strode to a podium in the Capitol City and told reporters that moms and dads across the state will be forced to endure yet another tax hike.  

Peter Luke reports:

Balancing the state budget in the next 10 weeks will require a combination of cuts as well as revenue, he said.

Never mind the fact that higher tax rates do more harm than good to total tax receipts as they force companies out of business, workers out of jobs and families out of Michigan (remember that "budget-balancing" $1.5 billion tax hike in 2007 and the precipitous fall revenue has taken each year since).  

Never mind the fact that a $10 million-plus property tax hike in Macomb County only three months ago, while aimed at wiping out county government deficits long term, has done nothing more than administer steroids to the problem, producing a projected $32.2 million deficit in 2010 and 2011.

Never mind the fact no one has ever squeezed blood from a stone.  Yesterday afternoon the House Democratic leader made his intentions pretty clear... grab your wallets (those of you who can still afford them) because Lansing's coming calling.  Again.

Not that that's why Dillon called his presser... like a magician distracting you with one hand and hiding an object with the other the man just snuck that one in there and hoped no one was paying attention.  Abra-kadabra.  Poof!  He's going to make our bank accounts disappear.  

And while it certainly won't be worth the price of admission, the distraction coooooould wind up being pretty interesting.

Read on...

That is all.

Alas, we're not that lucky.  We're stuck for the next year and a half with Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry's particular brand of executive performance and if we're not on our toes, tossing everything we've got behind an alternative... ANY freaking alternative this election cycle, we'll be getting another four years of stories like these...

The Detroit News really knows how to be an encouragement on a Monday morning as it quantifies factory job losses during the Granholm-Cherry administration's control of Lansing, and it's a staggering number to boot.  Try 950,000.  Between late 2000 and 2010 almost 1 million blue collar jobs are expected to have disappeared.  

The national recession, folks in other states remember better than us, actually started in 2007.  In other words, Lansing had this state in the ICU before the rest of the Country caught a sniffle.

Read on...

"It'll never be the same. That's a given. This (bankruptcy) makes the climb even steeper to ... get out of this local depression," said Jacobs, who has delivered the annual economic forecast for Macomb County for 25 consecutive years.

The former longtime professor's prediction was based on jobless rates in the county that exceeded expectations even before Chrysler and General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The Macomb County unemployment rate fell from 15.0 percent in March to 14.4 percent in April. But analysts say the decline was due to a large number of jobless people who stopped looking for work.

Going through the recorded roll-call vote something more than the Left's chronic trouble with intellectual consistency stuck out with a sore thumb. One member of the Democratic caucus with a particular rooting interest in this fight declined the opportunity to cast a vote.

Mike Huckleberry isn't just a freshman Dem legislator, he is also a restaurant owner. A ban on smoking in bars and restaurants would directly affect his own ability to draw a dinner crowd and maintain his non-legislative livelihood amid the ever-worsening Granholm-Cherry economic crisis.

So why no vote, instead of a no vote? Read on...

And we all love trees.  I have four or five of them in my back yard and another in the front.  They produce oxygen, shade, they smell nice, I can burn them to stay warm if my heat ever gets shut off... errr...

In the 75 centuries or 869 quadrillion years this planet has been circling the sun (depending on your source, of course) Earth has managed to adapt and survive just about everything.  Colossal, global floods.  Meteor showers.  Ice ages.  Quasi-nuclear winters.   Human beings.  

Leave it to automobiles to signal the end of all that is, was or ever could have been.  Thank goodness we've got these brave environmentalist crusaders willing to fight pollution whatever the cost.  And thank goodness there are so many of them here in Michigan to enable the Granholm-Cherry administration as they join with President Obama in foisting these massive new CAFE standards on an automobile industry on the verge of permanent financial ruin. Without them we'd have negligibly dirtier air and 50,000 auto workers wouldn't be mapping the best route from their soon-to-be-foreclosed homes to the nearest unemployment line.  And who would want that?

I mean, except for the Michigan Left.  Because according to the Detroit News, that's precisely how many Big 3 jobs are expected to be killed by the Democrats new environmental red (or should it be green) tape.

Nearly 50,000 jobs could be lost in the auto sector as a result of President Barack Obama's decision to approve fuel efficiency requirements for the nation's cars and trucks, according to government documents and a former presidential adviser.

At the same time, the increased fuel rules could cause full-size truck sales to fall significantly without government help, a Wall Street analyst said.

Those trucks, by the way, have long been the last remaining cash cow for the Big 3.  Buh-bye marketability.  Hello pink slips.  

All of this thanks to our elected officials?  

Read on...