Tag Archive for Michigan Road Funding

You Owe Them Nothing.

A budget message to Michigan's legislature about our universities

There is no upside to our state by expanding financial support to Michigan universities.

These indoctrination centers have done everything to subvert our cultural norms, provide aid and comfort to our enemies, and provide a base for partisan enclaves.  They have taken 10s of billions of dollars in the past several decades and given us what?

The University of Michigan is paying $10.6 million annually in salary and benefits to employ 82 diversity officers, including 76 on its Ann Arbor campus.

For that amount of money, more than 700 students could receive full in-state tuition at a time when the cost of college continues to rise, UM-Flint Professor of Finance and Business Economics Mark J. Perry has argued.

Perry has been a financial watchdog of sorts regarding UM’s DEI staffing, highlighting his research on his personal website for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank. He’s also successfully internally challenged UM faculty awards specified for minorities and women with Title IX complaint threats.

“… Once you move away from the academy/higher education, with its uniform leftist, progressive, liberal echo chamber, I think you find that mainstream Americans object to the diversity efforts that contribute to higher tuition and rising student loan debt that are contributing to the unsustainable ‘higher education bubble,'” Perry said.

Perry pretty much captures the entire argument.

While Michigan’s budget deadline looms, there is an opportunity to start walking back the $2 billion in funding to ‘higher ed’ in the state.  Complaints about the 0.5% increases vs. a desired 3% increase should not only fall on deaf ears, but should be fully repudiated with a universal university CUT of 25-50% until academics becomes the main focus in our taxpayers subsidized cultural petrie dishes.

I will repeat again that our constitution requires support for these leftist incubators, but it does not stipulate the level of support.

If Whitmer wants more money to the roads and primary education, or if we as a state want to properly fund our hidden liabilities going forward, it is time to move the resources from where it hurts us.  We owe these money pits nothing. Make the universities more competitive again by eliminating their slush moneys.

Make Education Great Again!

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Vultures Over Michigan

Senate Joint Resolution M: Paying for Michigan's Role in the Flint Water Disaster with Roads Funding?

Vulture Image 1Four Republican Michigan State Senators introduced Senate Joint Resolution M on December 15th to abrogate the just enacted PA 179 (HB 4370) deal which will eventually apply $ 600 million from State General Fund to roads repairs.  SJR M replaces this funding by raising the Michigan sales tax from 6% to 7%. The four Republican Senators are:

Ken Horn, District 32
Rick Jones, District 24
Darwin Booher, District 35
Mike Green, District 31

Senator Ken Horn

Senator Ken Horn

All four of these Republican Senators voted for every bill in the PA 174 – 180 road funding deal on November 3rd. But now, less than two months later, they want a different – all tax – funding arrangement for additional road work. Legislators’ remorse? Maybe not. Or perhaps remorse over a different situation?

First term Senator Horn was interviewed by Jake Neher of Michigan Radio on Senate Joint Resolution M:

Horn thinks the current plan relies too heavily on shifting money from other areas of the budget – especially with some big expenses on the horizon.
“That has me a little bit nervous,” he said. “If we tie our hands with $600 million out of the general fund, how do we ever manage new expenses?”

What “big….new expenses” cropped up in Senator Horn’s mind over the last 60 days?

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$ 3 Gas Across Michigan: Warming You Up For A Gas Tax Ratchet?

House Road Funding Package Puts Gas Tax Increases on Autopilot --- Tax on B5 Diesel for Heavy Trucks Cut 20%

Southfield, MI Gas Prices 12 June 2015

Southfield, MI Gas Prices 12 June 2015

Michiganders woke up this morning to discover that regular unleaded gasoline prices are now $ 3 per gallon, a $ .25 increase, or more, from yesterday. Refinery problems, summer driving season, and SE MI’s special fuel blend are blamed in the press, but really this price shock is an intended consequence the Federal Reserve’s zero interest policy and their determination to boost stock prices. Oil derivatives are cheaper than dirt when there is no cost to money.

Wall Street wasn’t happy early this year when plunging oil prices drove down stock averages. So someone is furiously selling off Treasury paper and buying oil & gasoline futures contracts. Treasury interest rates have been rising in lockstep with oil & gas prices, on the same days, even the same hours. Officially, no one knows who is behind these trades, but the Federal Reserve is sitting on $ 4 trillion in Treasury paper and is fighting any effort to audit their holdings. A coincidence? Not likely.

Your government extracting more money from your wallet.

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