Cronyism

How to Screw Taxpayers by Ron Weiser

Mr. Gantert, at MCC exposes more Detroit Institute of Arts deceit and treachery.

Michigan_Gang_Of_PolypsSoon after voters approved a three-county $230 million millage for the Detroit Institute of Arts, its top two officers received increases of $58,415 and $98,564 in compensation.

Graham Beal, director of the DIA, saw his total compensation increase from $455,453 in 2012 to $513,868 in 2013, a 12.8 percent increase. In two years, Beal’s total compensation has increased 20 percent from $426,699 in 2011 to the $513,868.

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Like I wrote before, Because Graham Beal Wouldn’t Take a Cut In Pay. Bigger picture involving our corrupt Governerd and state legislature?

“I believe there is a possibility (albeit a small one) that there could be some state funding made available towards part of the DIA solution,” Weiser told Buckfire in an e-mail Oct. 17 after speaking with Muchmore. He added that he had been helping DIA leadership find sources of money “for a long-term payment plan” since 2007.

Weiser, who is running for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents [snip]

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So, “Ronald Weiser, retired ambassador to Slovakia” somehow becomes oblivious to all the corruption because he serves on the DIA Board of Directors? Bullshit!

Exit question: feeling stupid yet, Mr. Anderson?

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They Just Don’t Learn

Why does the Michigan Republican Party leadership insist on doubling down on stupid?

Unless you sit on the MIGOP Policy Committee, the only clue most of us had that this was happening was a four-sentence news brief at WKZO (590 AM, Kalamazoo) – reported nowhere else according to Frontloading HQ – published a week ago on Monday night:

March 15th, 2016 appears to be the likely date of the Michigan Republican presidential primary in the next election. The Michigan Republican Party’s Policy Committee approved the date, which is the earliest a primary can be held without losing delegates to the Republican National Convention.

If a candidate wins over 50-percent of the statewide vote, he or she will be awarded all of Michigan’s delegates. If the winner has less than that threshold, the delegates will be split up based on the vote.

Which, initially, left me a bit at a loss for words. Apparently, someone was praying that this wasn’t going to get noticed. Of course, that raised the question of “why” . . . and a cursory review of the details provides us with a quite predictable answer.

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…by the company they keep.

Chairman B.S. and the rest of Team-“r” might want to pull back on the mutual admiration society they kludged together and reach for a bottle of Maalox®.

Things aren’t shaping up too well in the fantasy world they created for voters this November.

On second thought, skip the Maalox® and go straight to the Prilosec OTC ®.

So what happened now?

{Continued below the fold}

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License Of Looters

The problem is not the expense of the tools, but the tools themselves.

hammerI have frequently argued that the problem with campaign finance is not the ability of donors to support candidates, but rather the destructive hammer that government wields.

Full disclosure, as we have argued on these pages is critical.  The process out in the open encourages good behavior, and provides a limiting effect on pandering to financial interests by politicos.  Even the amounts even being less important to the argument. Saying:

We DO agree that limits should be removed from campaign finance. We agree that limiting to an arbitrary amount can impede free speech and political expression. What is considered a fair contribution into the process is a completely subjective matter that can only be resolved by the person who is willing to contribute into that process.  A person’s individual priorities and where a subject reaches a level of importance are hardly the providence of external assignment.

The full argument making the point that ‘effect’ of the contributions  being known, lessens the harmful power of the influence.

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In For A Penny

Lets simply call it what it is; a corrupted system

waiting-homerIn for a pounding.

The collapse of our healthcare model was not enough for the bureaucrats and politicians, but now they want to double down on stupid by selecting ‘failure’ as the option.  Aside from adding untold numbers onto our welfare rolls, disrupting doctor patient relationships and encouraging sloth, Michigan’s brain trust wants to go with a high bidder who has demonstrated they suck, and is also based out of the country, to handle your sensitive data.

The unicornfarts.org site was designed and implemented by a Canadian firm, and it never worked. It was slow, and had severe security flaws exposing personal records to those of criminal AND innocent intent.  And now Michigan [Take A Vote Not a Vacation©] officials have decided that Michigan deserves more of that, thank you very much. According to the Free Press

“Officials in the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder chose CGI Technologies and Solutions, whose parent company is headquartered in Montreal, over three U.S.-based firms.

CGI did not submit the lowest bid. Accenture, a management consulting and technology firm headquartered in New York, offered the lowest price by nearly $5 million, but “CGI provided best value,” Kurt Weiss, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, said Friday.

Oh yeah, did we mention there were US firms bidding?

RightMi.com feels it unnecessary to elaborate further at the moment.

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HB 5108 Fights Crony Capitalism, Protects Personal Property Rights

You bought it...you own it!

Tickets

It doesn’t matter the industry impacted or how long a law has been on the books. Any law that restricts our personal property rights in favor of crony capitalism should be abolished. That’s why lawmakers need to take action on House Bill 5108.

Right now, if you try to re-sell your sports or entertainment ticket above face value, you are a criminal under Michigan law. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to unload a couple of tickets from your season ticket package or whether you can no longer go to that concert and only want to sell your tickets for face value plus “convenience fees.”

That is, unless you use a specially-designated “vendor” given a monopoly by the team or venue over all ticket resales. Companies like StubHub and Ticketmaster are milking honest fans by tacking on additional fees just for the “right” to resell a ticket that you already own and are turning around and paying a kickback to the venue for their state-protected monopoly.

House Bill 5108 will end this ridiculous law and open the secondary ticket market up to be more fair and free – everybody will have the same rights and nobody is forced to break the law or pay additional fees just to resell their own property.

The House passed the bill in the spring. And given the Republican supermajority in the Senate you would think this bill would be a slam dunk, right? Apparently not because the bill has been stuck in committee for months.

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Study: 40% of Michigan Families Can’t Cover Basic Survival Expenses

Huge Decline in Wages for Michigan’s Working Families

Pay Falls for Low-Wage Men yet Women Still Far Behind,” found that real wages of Michigan workers have fallen by more than ten percent since 1979 for broad sections of the working class.

Hourly pay for low-wage workers of “prime working age” in Michigan fell 13.4 percent between 1979-2013, while pay for mid-wage workers of prime age fell 12.7 percent.

The collapse of wages in Michigan also illustrates president Obama’s and Governor Snyder’s “insourcing” policies, which involves pushing for lower corporate taxes and lower living standards and wages for workers in order to make American cities “attractive” for business. Snyder Obama Meet

Speaking at a Milwaukee factory in 2012, Obama celebrated the results of his and Snyder’s “bailout” policies in Michigan as a model for the rest of the country: What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other cities.

Declining work rates, stagnant wages, the rise of female-headed families, inferior education, and the arrival of millions of “immigrants” with poor education and low skills are little engines pushing up the poverty rate.

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MI GOP Joins Progressive-Pride Parade

Pride Parades have become the vogue for the “Look at me, I’m a celebrity” crowd that now rules pop-culture and its romance with Reality TV.

The MI GOP Convention last weekend, staged like a mindless reality TV show, solidified the MI GOP squarely in the ranks of the Progressive-Pride Parade marching across America.

Scripted to look genuine but only if you believe that professional wrestling and reality TV are real – Much ado about Nothing – No mention of the MI GOP’s repeated violations of the Republican Party Platform – Little if any grappling with the important threats to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we face as citizens of Michigan.

A token gesture to the heroic campaign of Wes Nakagiri and his Constutionalist supporters may have been the last hurrah for the Tea Party/Libertarian coalition within the Progressive GOP, calls for unity notwithstanding.

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