Cronyism

Cronyism, Michigan, Rent Seeking

So You Want To Be In Government?

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Why would anyone bother getting involved JUST because of a class?

Some folks think that citizen engagement is pitiful, so we are going to have classes on how to be engaged.

Let that sink in.  You are too busy dealing with all of the complications of life (jobs, family, American Idol), added to the complications of government (Taxes, zoning, naming of trail systems), and frankly, you have zero interest in managing the community budget.  Is there time left in your day to fully engage?

Unless Idol is cancelled, your box under the bridge falls apart, family members around you stop going to school, or stop getting married, or never need to go to the hospital, those few extra moments you are blessed with are precious.  That free time is becoming rarer as the more dedicated mini-Stalins take the reigns at all level of government. (yes, I purposefully avoided the ‘Hitler’ word. )

We are over managed by an out-of-control Federal bureaucracy, and our local governments have never been so in-your-face with private property rights deprecation in the history of our ‘conquered’ new world. (Columbus day wasn’t that long ago)  Dealing with what used to be the simplest of issues now requires a council meeting, permission, a check, and a rubber stamp.

But MSU extension has the fix.  Lets teach more dunderheads how to rule effectively!  The TC Ticker lays it out:

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Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Rent Seeking

Crony Capitalism: Not Just For Companies And Politicians!

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'Scandal Free' Obama Administration AG Eric Holder Spiked Criminal Charges Against UAW VP General Holiefield Sometime In 2014.

Detroit is atwitter over the criminal indictments that dropped on 26 July against former FCA (Chrysler) labor negotiator Alphons Iacobelli, UAW VP General Holiefield’s widow, Monica Morgan, and FCA financial analyst Jerome Durden. They looted the the UAW-Chrysler National Training Center (NTC) and bought a lot of bling with the proceeds, which were laundered through a charity called Leave the Light On Foundation created by General Holiefield.  Criminal use of bogus charities is a whole story in itself best left to another day.

Prior to this little imbroglio, General R. Holiefield and his wife Monica Morgan are fondly remembered for a ‘gun cleaning accident’ on 30 December 2013. In light of last week’s indictments, that event is now probably subject to some reinterpretation.

Were they battling over ill-gotten lucre?

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Cronyism, Democrats, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans, Taxes

Fox Conned

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Go Big, Or Go Home

Just as Governor Snyder signed the SB 242 – 244 ‘Good Jobs’ subsidy package yesterday, Foxconn announced that they accepted Wisconsin’s insane subsidies. The new Foxconn industrial campus will be built in the Badger State, not Michigan. The Foxconn competition, however, was the bait used to stampede the Michigan Legislature into passing the ‘Good Jobs’ package much sought by Michigan’s government and business establishments.

Wisconsin is going to lavish $ 3 billion in subsidies on Foxconn for somewhere between 3,000 and 13,000 new jobs. That works out to somewhere between $ 1 million and $ 230,769 in subsidies per job. Amortized over a 10 year period, the state of Wisconsin will be paying somewhere between $ 48.00 and $ 11.09 per labor-hour of every Foxconn worker’s wages using taxes extracted from other less fortunate Wisconsin workers. Subtract these per labor-hour subsidies from the headline wages touted for the future Foxconn workers and their ‘Good Jobs’ don’t look quite so good. Gussied up minimum wage jobs at best, wage theft at worst.

The little pig gets to feed at the trough, the hog gets taken to market and slaughtered.

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Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Elections, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans

Why Riot?

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What causes a riot in urban America?

The news media, social scientists, and political scientists are eager to offer up the usual stale left wing bromides on urban riots, but at best those bromides are based upon a lot of anecdotes rather than hard data. The plural of anecdote is not data. The disingenuousness of their bromides arises from the clash of facts with their committed leftist politics.  Economists were far less political, at least 25 years ago.

A pair of economists working under the aegis of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) applied linear regression computation modeling to various community statistics from a broad range of cities to determine which underlying issues cause riots and, further, to determine their intensity. Their results are a real eye opener and run contrary to the drivel being peddled by the media and academics on this 50th anniversary of the Detroit riots.

The National Bureau of Economic Research is a private nonprofit research organization which distributes its work product to financial officials and the public around the world. NBER is best known as the official arbiter of the start and end dates of economic recessions in the United States, a not uncontroversial subject. Its economists have run the gamut from the good (Milton Friedman, Wassily Leontief), to the bad (Austan Goolsbee), to the ugly (Paul Krugman). As a fun side note, it is comforting to know that an economists’ organization as august as NBER can lose money on their financial portfolio. No crony capitalists there!

The NBER divides its research into 20 programs; one of which is ‘Labor Studies’. Denise DiPasquale and Edward L. Glaeser produced NBER Working Paper 5456, The L.A. Riot and the Economics of Urban Unrest on behalf of the NBER Labor Studies Program. This paper was written after the Los Angeles riots of 1992, but its research reaches back into the 1960’s and across the world to construct its data base.

The DiPasquale/Glaeser study has two major components: a cross-national study which covers urban rioting around the world (including the U.S.), and a cross-city study which covers urban rioting across just the U.S. They assembled data sets on a large number of cities which included dependent variables representing the frequency of riots and the intensity of riots, along with many independent variables suggested by previous studies as being responsible for the frequency and intensity of those riots – poverty, unemployment, ethnic composition, and so on.

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All the Other Stuff, Conservative News, Cronyism, Opinion

Is the media finally acknowledging something (without actually coming flat-out and saying it)?

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So over the weekend, I’m catching up on some odds and ends like chores around the house, reading several websites and more than few e-mails.

Guess which order I tackled that list in?

Some of them I would categorize as the social ones with jokes and “gotta see this” images &video. Some of them asking me for my $0.02 on goings on. But one of them that stood out was a little bit of both.

A friend of mine sent me a link to President Trump’s Twitter feed where he posted a video of himself clotheslining “CNN”.

If you haven’t seen it yet, all it was, was a quickly done re-edit from Wrestlemania 23’s “The Battle of the Billionaires” which featured a pre-President Trump at the top of the card.

It was a short clip where, after the various “interferences” leading up to it, Trump clotheslines & pummels “CNN” in typical professional wrestling fashion and then just simply walks away.

I smiled, took it for what it was, replied to my friend and went about the rest of my day.

What surprised me, though, was how often I would come across that very same clip again and again, and again, and again…

{Continued below}

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Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Rent Seeking, Sports, Taxes

Battles of the Lower Depths in Detroit

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Davis et al v. Detroit Downtown Development Authority et al; U.S Eastern District of Michigan Case Number: 2:17-cv-11742

Eastern District of Michigan U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith ruled on June 19th that Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority can issue $34.5 million in bonds to pay for the relocation of the Detroit Pistons basketball team to the new Little Caesar’s Arena. The Judge’s ruling rejected arguments that the eventual use of school tax money to repay these tax increment finance bonds violates Detroit residents’ constitutional and statutory right to vote on a school tax money diversions.

Judge Goldsmith’s ruling denied Robert Davis‘ and D. Etta Wilcoxon’s motion for a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order in their lawsuit against the Detroit Downtown Development Authority. The Judge said the plaintiffs did not establish the need for an emergency injunction. The Judge politely neglected to mention that Robert Davis was sentenced in the very same Eastern District U.S. District Court to an 18 month Club Fed vacation for stealing $ 200,000 from the Highland Park School District in 2014. Mr. Davis should still be on probation for this minor peccadillo.

One complication here is that the tax monies being diverted are not those of the current Detroit Community Public School District, but rather those of the legacy Detroit Public School District which was reduced to zombie status last year in the DPS bailout. Is the old DPS really a school district today, or just a financial entity? The Detroit Community Public School District is a near bankrupt ward of the State of Michigan that won’t receive any Detroit property tax revenues until the legacy DPS district debts are paid off. No one alive today will live to see that.

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Conservative News, Cronyism, Elections, Fees, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Part Time Legislature

Political Self Perpetuation

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Making The Democratic Process In Michigan Just A Little Bit Less Democratic With A 21st Century Poll Tax

Representatives Steve Marino, Tommy Brann, Julie Calley, Kimberly LaSata, and Jim Lilly have just introduced six bills, HB 4745 to HB 4750, to increase filing fees for various down ballot political offices across the State of Michigan by 50% to 300%.  These are the fees prospective candidates can pay to get on the ballot in lieu of filing nominating petitions.

As you might expect, the highest (300%) filing fee increase proposed applies to candidates for State Representative (and Senator).

The kicker here? The filing fee is also no longer refunded to the runner up.  So running for political office in Michigan just became more expensive exclusive.

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Cronyism, Part Time Legislature, Research & Analysis

What is Young Americans for Liberty Hiding About Brian Calley’s Part-Time Legislature Campaign?

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A week ago, I was able to break national news regarding the involvement of the Young Americans for Liberty in Brian Calley’s part-time legislature campaign. The article caused an immediate stir, and elicited a caustic response from the YAL national leadership.

Although I was hoping for YAL to take responsibility for what they had done and at the very least ensure that they would be more careful when signing on to future campaigns, I realize that Washington D.C. organizations do not typically operate in that manner. Transparency is a four-letter word inside the Beltway, and although “liberty” may be in the organization’s title, YAL is clearly not immune to the sinister machinations of the swamp.

For the record, I have spoken to various YAL groups throughout the state of Michigan, and maintain a solid rapport with certain chapter leaders. Additionally, I help administer the Oakland County chapter of Campaign for Liberty, and I serve on the board of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan. So it is not in my personal interest to see liberty organizations be disgraced. Far from it, in fact. Nevertheless, every organization needs to be held accountable and exposed if it is engaging in shady or possibly illegal behavior. In my opinion, an organization should be held to a higher standard if it carries the banner of liberty. My article demonstrated with facts how YAL activists and resources were funneled into a campaign to rehabilitate the deservedly poor reputation of one of the worst big government Republicans in the state, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley.

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Conservative News, Cronyism, Firearms, Government Incompetence, Liberty, Michigan

I wasn’t aware that there was a court imposed exemption to a Constitutional Right?

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On the plus side, I've just found a sizable down payment for that Michigan Income Tax cut.

Can anyone find an exemption for “sensitive places” in either the Michigan or US Constitutions?

I cannot.

And just who makes the asinine argument for “sensitive places”?

{Click below to find out.}

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