Cronyism

I Imagine People in Hell Would Like Ice Water Too

Is this what Snyder meant by Rivers of Opportunity?

Detoilet_Monster_Still_HungryIt costs an average of $1,800 per year for auto insurance in Detroit’s suburbs; it costs about $3,600 within the city limits, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said from Motor City Casino [Ilitch family] at the 2014 Detroit Policy Conference Thursday.

“Detroiters can’t afford to make $300 a month in car insurance, in most cases more than their car note, [maybe we should buy them a park to ease their woes?]” Duggan said to the room of business, nonprofit and media leaders. “I’ve spent a lot of time already with the Republican leadership on some ideas on that …[suspect Numero Uno]

“I just want the ability to be competitive on car insurance.”

What that legislation might look like, Duggan wouldn’t say.

“There’s no reason for us to talk about these details,” Duggan said during a media scrum after his on-stage speech, “because I need to get 56 reps and 20 senators to agree to them and I just as soon do it with them and not announce the details here, so no disrespect.”

MORE

Looks like our little green friend in Detoilet is still hungry but, oh sure, why not? Just for Snyder’s inaugural party MC carpetbagger mayor buddy, let’s call the legislation: “Grand” bargain Auto Insurance.

Sorry, Progressive is already taken. But, ya, that’s the ticket, Mayor Mike. You know, the old saying is true: the more things allegedly change in Michigan, the more they stay the same.

Has anyone else been left out of getting a cut of the Detroit bailout? If so, please leave suggestions in comment.

Ps. anyone else notice Detroit’s Police no longer reveal crime summary reports?

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Gary Found a Billion

True story. First bill.

RemanufacturedSen. Gary Peters is introducing his first bill in the Senate Wednesday — a measure to reduce the nearly $1 billion in annual federal vehicle repair costs by encouraging the use of remanufactured auto parts.

REST if you can stomach it

Oh look, Gary! I found $3,300,000,000. Hey, Gary! Want an unauthorized $500,000 and other obscene waste to go after? Oops, that would involve who you replaced. Seriously, retention bonuses? For the public sector? And they’re deadbeats? Nope. Gary says let’s do a bifarceisan re-pop parts bill.

President Reagan said jellybeans but, I say you always can tell the character of a person by looking at their shoes, which are probably made in China.

And, don’t even start. Especially when just doubling down on ‘I’m a mom I have kids’ buffoonery.

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Pavlov’s Politicians

Reflex Conditioning Drives Uncontrolled Government Spending

Pavlovs PoliticianThe brilliant, Nobel Prize winning physiologist Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov demonstrated that you could condition a dog to salivate by sounding a metronome. All he had to do was sound the metronome when putting out food for his dogs. It did not take long for his dogs to associate the sound of the metronome with food.  Then he no longer even had to put food out to get the dogs to salivate; he only had to sound the metronome.

Today, inferior rank politicians have been conditioned to salivate when a financial grant is offered by superior rank politicians. The only problem with these grants of largess is that they always come with caveats, and usually require matching funds. These restrictions are a deliberate – and successful – effort to frustrate all efforts to manage government expenditures.

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All the King’s Horsemen

And all the king‘s men

Wouldn’t put our Constitution together again.

shiny-badges-privilegeregular citizens

Just another way our Elected Elite provides for their unionized protectors to seek pathways of supplemental income in their retirements.

Sen. Jones, you’re only as good as your last attaboy. Your village called, again.

Matter of fact, RightMi.com’s phone has been ringing a lot lately asking if we’ve seen him and his peers.

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It Only Gets Worse

Taxes that increase every year to keep up with inflation.

STOP-167Say What?

We have used the 16.7% tax increase in the stop sign logo, (at the right) and will continue to do so.  However, it is hardly a complete look at the tax implications if proposal 15-1 were to pass. We are attempting to find all the ways in which our prior legislative session gave us the shaft, including train to nowhere projects, redistribution of wealth, and the fuel tax replacement components.

Folks might actually be aware of the replacement fuel tax and that it will be more than what the was tax was before. Presumably, it simply replaces the sales tax that has been collected on fuel, that does not go toward roads.  However, when one looks at the analysis done by the House Fiscal Agency, there is a paragraph that explains the mechanism accurately; and in particular, a line at the end of that paragraph points out an easily missed point.

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Michigan Political Math: $ 1.2 Billion = $ 1.08 Billion

Mass Transit Skims $ 120 Million from Proposal 2015-01 Road Work Funds

Train Wreck ImageEver hear of the Michigan Comprehensive Transportation Fund? Ten cents of every Michigan fuel tax dollar gets diverted to this mass transportation slush fund.  It is only just behind the sales tax as a diversion of your current fuel tax dollars from Michigan’s roads.

All motor vehicle fuel taxes collected in the State of Michigan are first deposited into the Michigan Transportation Fund. Then MCL 247.660 (1)(f) (Public Act 51 of 1951) dictates that 10% of the funds deposited in the Michigan Transportation Fund be immediately transferred to the Comprehensive Transportation Fund. The amended version of MCL 247.660 you are being offered in Proposal 2015-01 has the very same section (1)(f), making the same 10% immediate diversion.

So the $ 1.2 billion that Proposal 2015-01 supporters are promising you for road work is actually only $ 1.08 billion.  Kirk T. Steudle, P.E. gets a whole new stash to maintain and expand his stable of rotting train cars, $ 120 million that cannot be spent on the roads by law.  $ 120 million that gets skimmed from the $ 1.2 billion you are being promised for the roads.  And no, it is not skimmed from the $ 800 million that Proposal 2015-01 dedicates to the Democratic base.

Now you now know how Michigan political math works in the age of Common Core.  Pay $ 2 billion for roads, get $ 1 billion in road work.

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Here Comes the BIG SCARE

Boy, the desperation is getting thick within the Ineptocracy that is Lansing, and D.C.

The Federal Highway Trust Fund, which accounts for nearly one-third of the state’s transportation budget, made about $1 billion available to Michigan in 2013. That’s 8 percent less than five years earlier and 15 percent less when adjusted for inflation, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

AutoBailoutVisitSo, where the Hell were Senators Levin, and Stabenow? Why did they allow our state to flounder while their man Harry Reid, was in charge? $3 Trillion?

The funding that generally comes from federal gasoline and diesel taxes was up 20 percent over a decade but down 5 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars [happens when .FEDGOV prints money].

The AP analysis also shows that Michigan ranked seventh-lowest among states in per-capita federal transportation funding in 2013 and second-lowest in per-capita overall spending on highways, roads and bridges [why is that?]. Only Georgia spent less per capita.

The same problem that has left the Highway Trust Fund teetering with insolvency [snip]

Go figure. Can you imagine why the Highway Trust Fund is insolvent? Remember, there’s 535 of them all doing the same thing.

is vexing Michigan — people drive less and with more fuel-efficient vehicles while paying per-gallon gas taxes unchanged for two decades. For the last four years, Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers have had to divert money from the general fund [snip]

Call it what it is. The diversion or, *stolen* money is a replacement, and an additional tax mostly because a Granholm era boob running MDOT is unaccountable for infrastructure spending, and frivolous railroad schemesmore here – among other wasteful nomenclature frills. Seriously, MDOT has been a documented rogue agency since at least 2006 (yes, guess who?), which oddly enough has ample resources for making videos. Try doing that in the private sector and one would be out of business or, fired, and sued for criminal and/or civil damages.

to ensure the state receives its matching federal transportation money because traditional revenue sources — state fuel taxes and vehicle registration taxes — are lower or stagnant.

Registration taxes are drying up? Well, gee, go figure what happens when Lansing’s Republican Majority loots what isn’t theirs. Went after pensions when it wasn’t necessary? Instantly $10,000,000,000+ flew the coop. Broke the 2007, promise by raising the State Income Tax, which they applied to those pensions. Those two raids alone stole money from folks who have decided to put off vehicle purchases, especially, the retirees who got plundered by Snyder. Look, it ain’t the undischargable student loan debt-slave Millennials who have money. Hell, they can’t even figure out that when borrowing for higher education it effects tuition rates to rise (another cluster**** conversation for another time).

Back on-point.

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