Michigan Politics

Michigan Political considerations.

Michigan, Michigan Politics

Insert Cash Here

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Yet another bucket lister with bling

It’s getting interesting already.

In 2009, a relatively new guy came on the political scene, threw down some shekels, and became the titular head of the Michigan GOP.  We all knew he was a fraud, but money talks, and we all know the rest.

And now, the first round of financial reporting is out for 2018.  Candidates for Michigan’s top spot are starting to sort out, and the Michigan Campaign Finance Network has done a nice job of putting up some of their financial numbers fast. The heavy fundraising this early in the game goes to the usual suspects and one that stands out in a peculiar way, also hailing from Ann Arbor, but this time on the Democrat side.

Democrat Shri Thanedar, Ann Arbor
Total Contributions: $3.2 million

Thanedar, a businessman who lists himself as an entrepreneur on campaign finance disclosures, has loaned his own campaign $3.2 million so far this year. His campaign reported only one other contributor. That person gave $100.

The Thanedar campaign reported spending $81,557 from when the committee formed in April and the campaign finance reporting deadline on July 20.

Michigan is no stranger to self-funding candidates. In 2010, Republican businessman Rick Snyder contributed about $6 million to his primary campaign to help score the GOP nomination for governor. He went on to win the general election.

I suppose the fantasy of every political wannabe in Michigan is to self fund the next Gubernatorial contest.

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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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Michigan, Michigan Politics

The ‘transgender vote”…

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The Flap over the NDAA...

The transgender provision amendment to the NDAA…

When I first joined the Tea Party, and then formed one in Kalkaska County, I often quoted the organization’s 3 main principles:

Constitutionally limited government…

Fiscal responsibility…

and a Free Market economy…

To these I added one of my own:

RESPONSIVE Representation…

After waiting for the chaos surrounding the NDAA amendment defeat to strip funding for transgender surgery/therapy from the Defense Department budget, (which didn’t happen) I sent an e-mail to Congressman Bergman seeking clarification for his NO vote on the amendment…His response was nearly immediate…I received a call from James Hogge around 1 pm yesterday, requesting a dinner meeting with the Congressman in Traverse City…I was told I could extend the invitation to a small, but concerned group of grassroots supporters, which I did…The following is a synopsis of the evening’s events…

After the exchange of social pleasantries and small talk, the Congressman addressed the issue at hand, which was simply Constitutional authority…The Commander in Chief has discretion over the military budget, Congress DOES NOT…The function of Congress concerning the NDAA is to review and approve the DoD budget request for the coming budget cycle, and NOT to dictate how the budget is spent…This budget being debated is still a “Continuing Resolution” budget in order to allow it to proceed to “Reconciliation” needing just 51 votes in the Senate, which it should get…This new budget (if passed) will go into effect on October 1st of this year, and will be available to the DoD on January 1st of 2018…

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Conservative News, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans, Taxes

Riot, Insurrection, Rebellion, or Uprising?

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A Cure Always Requires a Correct Diagnosis

All Americans alive in 1967, of all races, called Detroit’s five day long spasm of violence, arson, and looting in July 1967 a riot. Some labeled it a race riot, others just a riot. Not for long. Within a year, government and media were plying the public with a long list of racial grievances said to be responsible and an even longer list of expensive liberal programs which promised to cure them.

The Detroit riots were deceitfully recast as an insurrection, rebellion, or an uprising to drive those liberal programs, but ultimately this revisionism just glamorized base criminality, Fifty years later, billions have been doled out in Detroit through those liberal programs and Detroit is in even worse shape by every metric.

Let’s start with some definitions from Merriam-Webster:

Definition of riot

  1. archaic a : profligate behavior : debauchery b : unrestrained revelry c : noise, uproar, or disturbance made by revelers
  2. a : public violence, tumult, or disorder b : a violent public disorder; specifically : a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together and acting with a common intent
  3. a random or disorderly profusion the woods were a riot of color
  4. one that is wildly amusing the new comedy is a riot

Definition of insurrection

  1. an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government

Definition of rebellion

  1. opposition to one in authority or dominance
  2. a : open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government b : an instance of such defiance or resistance

Definition of uprising

  1. an act or instance of rising up; especially : a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government

Note that the definitions of insurrection, rebellion, and uprising all state that these events are a defiance of established government, while the definition riot does not.

Were the events in Detroit from 23 to 27 July 1967 a defiance of established government?

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Humor in Michigan, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion

They Need More Coloring Books

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Kalkaska Mayor demonstrates common sense by not engaging in unwinnable enterprise.

I just love it.

If someone said “hey come on by for a bit, cause we want to humiliate you, kick your grapes, and pour shame syrup all over you,” the usual response from squishy politicos, would be “can I bring the sprinkles?”  Tis true.   That is essentially what has happened in the past.

It goes like this:

  • 1.  Politico or popular figure says or does something considered politically incorrect, or off-colored.
  • 2. Rage from community, usually driven from those who simply don’t like that politico. Because .. words.
  • 3. News outlets, always looking for the next hand out of humble pie pile on with sensationalized reporting, never taking a position, but carefully framing the events.
  • 4. Politico, feeling pressure from all side caves in, and feeds the beast.

Few can take the onslaught of abuse, usually delivered by the crazy left in a way that would make Saul Alinsky proud.

“Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.”

We already know the lefties ain’t too humorous up in these here parts.  There isn’t really much else for them.

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Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion

Independence

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Maybe it does not mean what we had always thought it should mean.

Happy Independence Day.

Celebrate!  Take the family out, and have a great time.   Wave the flag, blow off some fireworks, But proudly give the finger to big government types everywhere.  And don’t limit that last to just a single day in the middle of summer.

Kids in our public schools are not likely taught the truth of the cause of the revolution, but it was not hard to understand, and was spelled out succinctly in the declaration of independence.  Colonists had enough.  They were done with being pushed around.

The king was a schmuck, the power he claimed over the colonies was not earned, not justified, nor could it be respected. So we flipped him the bird, and wrote him a break up letter.

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Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion

Bill Schuette – Jack Of All Trades

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Michigan's Attorney General joins the pipeline closure drum corps.

You can say one thing about Attorney General Bill Schuette, he has had a lot of different jobs.

The latest is apparently environmental expert and mechanical engineer.  Acting like those cats in the disaster movies who always seem to have the correct and dire warnings that “something really bad is about to happen,” Schuette has now called for the end to line five.  From the Detroit News:

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette on Thursday called for the development of a “specific and definite timetable” to close Enbridge Energy Inc.’s Line 5 dual pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac.

Schuette’s comments came as his office, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources and Agency for Energy released a long-awaited Line 5 alternatives assessment conducted by an independent contractor.

The 337-page report states the 64-year-old Line 5 could operate indefinitely, but Schuette said he “strongly” disagreed. One viable alternative, he said, would be to construct a tunnel under the straits that could serve a similar function but allow for continuous visual inspection while creating infrastructure and construction jobs.

I suppose we could add “Tunnel Builder” to the resume as well?

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Liberty, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion, Part Time Legislature, Philosophy, Republicans

Ad Hoc Ad Interim

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As badly as we need this done, do we care why he’s doing it, or even whether he gets the credit?

“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” (Winston Churchill, to his private secretary, Jock Colville, on June 21st, 1941, the evening before Operation Barbarossa)

Churchill was well known for being a consistent and vociferous opponent of communism, and had often spoken quite unfavorably about the Soviet Union, and particularly of Joseph Stalin (who was well-known even then as the brutal monster that honest history records). However, in seeking to stop the menace of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Churchill was willing to adopt an ad hoc “enemy of my enemy” approach, and initiated the Anglo-Soviet Agreement for joint action against Germany.

Given much of the recent hullabaloo regarding a badly-needed grassroots initiative having been likely co-opted, by a moderate opportunist apparently seeking a means to advance his political ambitions, and given that I have personally stood directly in the path of those ambitions at least twice in the past seven years, what I’m about to say is going to sound exceedingly strange, but I’m going to say it anyway.

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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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