"First rule in government spending: Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?" - S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) "Contact"
I’m going to throw out a few hypothetical questions to the readers here at RM, and I’d like to get your candid response.
Ready?
Here we go…
{Click the red box to continue}
(5)Nuh Uh.
(0)
The 20 year Regional Transit Authority, 1.2 mil property tax plan is on the ballot in four Southeastern Michigan counties, on November 8th. The public doesn’t seem to realize that this property tax will be imposed on all four counties, even if one or more of the counties reject it. A big change from past millage requests specifically designed to shove this tax down anti tax Macomb County’s throat. Michigan’s tax-and-spend establishment really wants this tax to pass.
The RTA master plan is $ 1.22 billion in new fare revenue, $ 3.1 to $ 3.3 billion in new property taxes, and $ 1.7 billion in new Federal & State subsidies. A grand total of $ 6 billion, more or less. Let’s say that the relatively modest increase in vehicle revenue miles provided by the RTA master plan – 32% – doubles their ridership. That $ 6 billion cost, divided by 78,327 new passengers, equals $ 76,602 per passenger over the 20 year period. You could buy every one of those 78,327 new riders a new car and pay for their fuel and insurance as well. Instead, RTA will treat them to the urban mass transit experience.
Urban buses and other mass transit vehicles have a special ambiance with their diverse ridership and high level of maintenance. This experience is enhanced by the faint aroma of pepper spray, plus the full array of odors you would encounter in a hospital emergency room during an overwhelming disaster – except for disinfectant. Bus scheduling allows those too poor to visit a casino or play online slots at Wizard Slots the opportunity to gamble daily on punctuality at their workplaces.
Why riders are unwilling to pay 20% of the cost of mass transit, and why mass transit funding has to be extracted from taxpayers using the threat of foreclosure. On top of this, mass transit advocates have to raid road funding and vehicle registration fees to deliver their ‘service’. No free market economics here, despite strong support from the Chamber of Commerce types.
(8)Nuh Uh.(0)Hillary's Plan to Loot Your 401k Account
International Business Times and Yahoo Finance just posted headline stories on the plan created by Hillary’s Wall Street masters to loot your future retirement savings. Today’s voluntary 401k savings plans will be replaced by mandatory retirement taxes on all private sector workers – and their employers – which would be turned over to Wall Street hedge funds for investment:
Hillary Clinton And Wall Street: Financial Industry May Control Retirement Savings In A Clinton Administration
By David Sirota and Avi Asher-Schapiro, IBT, 10/19/16 at 12:50 AMWhile Hillary Clinton has spent the presidential campaign saying as little as possible about her ties to Wall Street, the executive who some observers say could be her Treasury Secretary has been openly promoting a plan to give financial firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings. The executive is Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group.
It is a plan that proponents say could help millions of Americans — but could also enrich another constituency: the hedge fund and private equity industries that Blackstone dominates and that have donated millions to support Clinton’s presidential bid.
The proposal would require workers and employers to put a percentage of payroll into individual retirement accounts “to be invested well in pooled plans run by professional investment managers,” as James put it. In other words, individual voluntary 401(k)s would be replaced by a single national system, and much of the mandated savings would flow to Wall Street, where companies like Blackstone could earn big fees off the assets. And because of a gap in federal anti-corruption rules, there would be little to prevent the biggest investment contracts from being awarded to the biggest presidential campaign donors.
(13)Nuh Uh.(1)And Who Else?
Clinton Township Trustee Dean Reynolds was charged with bribery Thursday, in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan. Rizzo Environmental Services allegedly paid Reynolds $ 50,000 – $ 70,000 in cash for his vote and influence on an $18 million, 10 year garbage collection contract. Reynolds is also alleged to have received free legal services from a Rizzo connected attorney in his divorce case.
Reynolds is a Hillary supporter, a gun control supporter, and an environmental supporter. Now living proof that you don’t need a gun to commit a serious crime. As you read about this case, ask yourself why not one article mentions his political affiliation. Were he a Republican, his affiliation would be in every headline. Reynolds is an AFL-CIO toady now running for Clinton Township Supervisor in the November 8th General Election. The Metro Detroit AFL-CIO scrubbed their endorsement of him this morning, but they can’t change history:
The Free Press reports that the “FBI’s years-long investigation is expected to trigger criminal charges against numerous politicians in towns and cities across Macomb County who engaged in pay-to-play schemes with various developers and businesses. The Clinton Township case, sources said, is just the tip of the iceberg and numerous more charges will follow.”
Rizzo Environmental Services is under contract in a lot of communities outside of Macomb County in Michigan. Who else have they bribed?
(8)Nuh Uh.(0)Submitted w/o any further comment.
(2)Nuh Uh.(0)Pious Harbor Beach Mayor Booms obeys Open Meeting Act and then tells the public how we should be thankful he's a nice guy for doing so.
Recently the Mayor of Harbor Beach told a member of the public during a public meeting:
When I allow people to speak during city council meetings, I do it because I’m a nice guy.
Harbor Beach Mayor Gary Booms
WRONG, Mr. Mayor don’t-know-the-law. It’s a legal requirement. In that spirit, I have decided to publish an email I recently sent “Gary” — so more light may be put upon his false self-virtue. Below is that email:
Hi Gary,I hope you don’t mind me calling you Gary. I don’t mind me calling you Gary, so we should be good.
I read a recent comment you made during a public meeting as Mayor.
One part of this caught my attention, aside from the fact you have no regards for an employee’s natural right to self-defense. It was:Booms added, interrupting Armitage’s attempt at a question. “When I allow people to speak during city council meetings, I do it because I’m a nice guy.”Let’s not make this about you and how nice and virtuous you are. Based on what I’ve read about your respect for Casey’s rights, I’ll go ahead and assume you’re not really that virtuous. Anyhow…You don’t let people speak in public comment because you’re a nice guy. You let people speak because the Michigan Open Meetings Act requires that you let them speak.(5) A person shall be permitted to address a meeting of a public body under rules established and recorded by the public body. The legislature or a house of the legislature may provide by rule that the right to address may be limited to prescribed times at hearings and committee meetings only.A professional tip: if you’re going to extol your virtues, it shouldn’t be over something the law requires you to do. That just seems tacky and insults the intelligence of anyone who is informed.Kindly,Phillip Hofmeister
(36)Nuh Uh.(4)41st Place Among the States
You have probably read the Mackinac Center’s excellent works on Michigan’s government finances, much of which they release through Michigan Capitol Confidential. Top quality analyses, but parochial in the sense that they don’t place Michigan’s government finances in the context of the other American states. An Illinois 501(c)(3) organization, Institute for Truth in Accounting does, and has come up with a useful metric – taxpayer burden – by which you can rank Michigan financial status relative to the other states. No accounting degree necessary.
Suffice it to say, you will not be reading any of Truth in Accounting’s work in Michigan’s nitwit, cheerleading media.
(11)Nuh Uh.(1)Why No Criticism of GM, Chrysler, and the UAW? They Got a Much Sweeter Tax Loss Deal from the Democrats.
A Saturday story in the New York Times alleges that Republican Presidential nominee Donald J. Trump may have avoided paying income taxes for 18 years due to a $ 915 million net operating loss declared on his 1995 federal tax return. A net operating loss is a form of tax loss carry forward which can be used by a taxpayer to offset future (and sometimes past) income taxes due the federal government. The authors claim that someone anonymously mailed them pages from Trump’s 1995 return. A felony violation of federal law which the New York Times only participates in when its enemies are the victims. Given recent history, it is far more likely that some snake in Obama’s IRS mailed the pages to the New York Times. One more reason to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
None of this is news. Trump admitted to the size of his 1990’s loss in his book Art of the Comeback. More interestingly, he explains how the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA 1986) crushed the real estate market in New York and created his massive loss. Note that he mistakenly attributes his predicament to TEFRA, a 1982 act which also caused him some problems, but it was actually TRA 1986 which he is referring to.
Tax loss carry forwards date back to at least 1954 in the U.S. tax code. The logic behind them is simple: if the government benefits from an entity’s income, it should share that same entity’s misfortune when it runs losses. Both moral and ethical, two concepts not usually associated with the U.S. tax code. The salacious case being made against Trump has no merit, except as propaganda. Remember, Trump had to lose $ 915 million on long term assets to get the tax loss carry forward. More importantly, Trump’s massive loss was created by a sea change in the rules of the game dictated by the same federal government.
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)
Attorney Thomas H. Bleakley (P23892) has to be feeling a lot like Captain John Yossarian, the harried protagonist of Joseph Heller’s great satirical novel Catch-22. Chief Judge Michael J. Talbot of the Michigan Court of Claims dismissed Attorney Bleakley’s Helen Moore et al v. Rick Snyder [16-000153-MM] lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature’s passage of the DPS bail out on August 4th, in an order published on August 8th.
The Michigan Court of Claims was moved from the Ingham County Circuit Court to the Michigan Court of Appeals by PA 164 of 2013 to:
MCL 600.6419 Court of claims; exclusive jurisdiction; exceptions; claims less than $1,000.00; powers and jurisdiction; counterclaims; res judicata; setoff, recoupment, or cross declaration; writs of execution or garnishment; judgment as final; no jurisdiction of claim for compensation under MCL 418.101 to 418.941 and MCL 419.101 to 419.104; jurisdiction of circuit court over certain actions and proceedings; “the state or any of its departments or officers” defined.
Section 6419(1)
(a) To hear and determine any claim or demand, statutory or constitutional, liquidated or unliquidated, ex contractu or ex delicto, or any demand for monetary, equitable, or declaratory relief or any demand for an extraordinary writ against the state or any of its departments or officers notwithstanding another law that confers jurisdiction of the case in the circuit court.
But, according to Judge Talbot, not the constitutional claims pleaded in Helen Moore et al v. Rick Snyder
(7)Nuh Uh.(0)You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time....President Abraham Lincoln
Detroit’s Deputy Director of Construction and Project Management, James Wright, suddenly resigned today. Wright had been the Detroit Medical Center’s Corporate Vice President of Facility Engineering and Construction when Mayor Duggan hired him under a contract to be the $ 250,000 a year Deputy Director of the Detroit Land Bank Authority two and a half years ago. He was then transferred to the city’s payroll in March of this year at a $ 175,000 a year salary. Mr. Wright’s resignation does not include a severance and was effective immediately. Certain evidence of a firing at this level of government, not a resignation. You can bet that Wright just got his Federal target letter. from U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.
The FBI and the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) have been investigating Detroit’s demolition program for about a year now. Enough time to start issuing indictments. SIGTARP has jurisdiction over the Hardest Hit Fund which provided the $250 million Detroit has spent on home demolitions (and lavished on contractors). Detroit Mayor Duggan has pledged complete cooperation with the investigation. Wright Right…..
Wright’s resignation comes on the heels of Attorney General Bill Schuette’s failed prosecution of whistleblower Barry Ellentuck, the ADR Consultants, LLC President who went to the FBI with solid evidence of the corruption in the Detroit home demolition program – the very day before AG Schuette indicted him. Mr. Ellentuck was set up by a lying, thieving subordinate and his prosecution had all the hallmarks of retaliation for squealing to the Feds. Home demolition contract costs suddenly rose from about $ 10,000 per house to $ 16,000 per house under Mayor Duggan, just after Mr. Wright took control of the program.
The city originally signed Wright to a two-year contract that paid $250,000 a year. He was transferred to the city’s payroll at $175,000 a year when his original two year employment contract expired in March. Evidently, $ 175,000 a year is just not enough for Mayor Duggan’s exalted talent. As a point of reference, Governor Snyder makes $ 159,300 per year as Governor of Michigan. Governor Snyder clearly holds the wrong office to make money in this state.
Wright awarded corrupt ‘unit price’ demolition contracts to three connected demolition companies, Adamo, Homrich and MCM Management. You might recognize them as very profitable MDoT contractors, but that was the Proposal 1 story of last year. Wright disclosed contract prices before the bids were opened to their competitors and allowed all three companies special, reduced bonding requirements unavailable to other bidders.
(16)Nuh Uh.(0)
