Michigan

Same As It Ever Was

Why would we expect anything else from the party of Clinton?

Flint Water ImageDemocrats have been screaming about Republican leadership’s failure on the Flint water issue.

While we have no overreaching love for the governerd, who brought us expansion of Obamacare, lost our insurer of last resort, broke the law for his ‘roads’ funding boondoggle, and still hands out money like its not his own, it was not Rick Snyder who put lead in the pipes of Flint.  He took credit for the failure of his bureaucracy to properly assess a fast developing public health issue, but he surely did not cause the problem.

Was it the bureaucracy itself?  Yes.  Decades of poor decision making by those who have by hook or crook made their life’s work to be the decimation of ‘Buick City.’  Poor planning and perhaps a little power mongering graft?  From Reuters:

“Henderson’s lawsuit alleged that Mayor Karen Weaver ordered her assistant and a volunteer to redirect donors from a local fund set up to help families affected by the water crisis to her political action committee instead.

The lawsuit charged that the city employee was “specifically directed” to instruct people “step-by-step” to donate to the mayor’s “Karenabout Flint” fund through its website, rather than the Charity Safe Water/Safe Homes fund through the city’s website.

Sure thing.

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Because giving them even more money has always solved Detroit’s problems.

Hold onto your wallets because the fun is set to begin again tomorrow.

Last week the Michigan House, in response to the temper tantrum thrown by the Detroit Federation of Teachers (which to be fair, was in response to the gross ineptitude of one Judge Steven Rhodes), passed yet another in a long line of “life preservers” to the failed Detroit Public School district.

Despite having been “locked out” by administration (seriously, that is what the DFT was using as a speaking point on every local talking head show last weekend), things went back to normal by Wednesday.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of how calling in sick en masse is somehow the equivalent of being “locked out” from your place of employment…but I digress.

Unlike the bailout proposed by the Michigan Senate, the House package is about $200-million lighter than the Senate’s, and is choked so full of poison-pill provisions that it is guaranteed to cause even more problems.

 

Bus roll over

“Not to worry! With a little elbow grease and some friendly verbal persuasion, we’ll have you upright and humming along the road in no time,” our relentlessly positive Gov Snyder allegedly remarked about the latest DPS bailout.

{More below the fold}

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So Its Trump

Donald Trump has passed through the gauntlet and is the Republican nominee

trump article openerIts been a personal quest to stay out of the presidential contest debate to whatever extent possible.

Now the nominee is clear. Though not surprising today, it was not the person most folks would have predicted in July of 2015.  In fact it was likely that even Donald Trump thought he could roll for a while, be outrageous, and then get back to business as usual.

The more he stretched credibility however, the more he appealed to those looking for the ‘not normal’ in politics.  Many, whom we might describe as angry and disaffected with politics-as-usual, found his antics refreshing and (in some strange way) appealing. They see in him a willingness to confound convention and ‘normalcy’ in the body politic; “normalcy,” being a condition which has proven inadequate for our nation, and has created a slow road to some bizarre and unrecognizable dystopian squalor.

At the same time, those who created this environment through passive aggressive politics and (even worse) outright compromise of principle, have been freaking out.  The #NeverTrump brigade was born and now faces a conundrum with an impending Hillary presidency.  ‘Moderates’ who give in to the liberal agenda frequently, screamed “He’s not a conservative!”

As-if conservatism was ever really important to them.

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Maybe Someone IS Paying Attention?

Warranty work to be performed on I-75

One of the biggest complaints (not exclusive, however) we have had with the MDoT is it’s mishandling of warranty needs.

I believe they want to make sure we see something being handled.  From The MDoT Pravda:

I-75 warranty repairs north of Grayling start Monday

COUNTY:Crawford

HIGHWAY:I-75

CLOSEST CITY: Grayling

ESTIMATED STARTING DATE: Monday, May 9, 2016

ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE:  Friday, May 20, 2016 (weather dependent)

PROJECT:

Contractors for the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) will be making warranty pavement repairs and sealing cracks on 5.5 miles of northbound I-75 from north of Grayling Exit 254 to north of Hartwick Pines Road Exit 259. This work will be done at the expense of the contractor.

Project map: http://bit.ly/1TtKJjH

TRAFFIC RESTRICTIONS:                     

This work will require lane closures with traffic shifts.

The next project might be to figure out what to do about THIS.

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Arming Our Defenders

Representative says get involved now to protect our military personnel.

glennGary Glenn posts this:

ACTION ALERT! — Urgently need your immediate help on two fronts:

I learned today that the House Military and Veterans Affairs Commitee will hold a public hearing this Thursday, May 5th, on House Bill 5376, legislation I introduced — in response to the Islamic terrorist attack which killed five unarmed U.S. military personnel at a recruiting office in Chatanooga — to require that at least one soldier on duty be armed at all times at every National Guard facility in Michigan that’s accessible by the public.

HB 5376 is cosponsored by eighteen Republicans and eight Democrats, including every member of the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee of both parties with one exception, a new Democratic state representative who was elected in the March 8th special election and wasn’t in office when I gathered cosponsors.

Read full bill and list of cosponsors: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2016-HB-5376

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Blowback

When A Devious, All Too Clever Plan Goes Awry

Rhodes Image 1aRetired U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven W. Rhodes got just a bit too clever in his latest ploy to stampede the Michigan Legislature. He is trying to ram a $ 720 million bail out for the Detroit Public Schools through the Legislature, but wound up creating a labor relations firestorm. He even managed to grievously damage the prospects of the bail out in the Legislature. As always, it is the DPS students who are suffering the fallout.

Judge Rhodes, the DPS ‘transition manager’, sent out an email on Saturday telling all and sundry that DPS would have no money to pay teachers after June 30th. He urged Michigan lawmakers to “act thoughtfully, but with the urgency that this situation demands”. The Detroit News later reported:

Rhodes, who warned over the weekend the district would run out of money June 30 and stop making payroll for employees who get paid over the summer, urged employees, parents and others Monday to press lawmakers to pass the rescue plan.

Rosen ImageThis is a reprise of the successful panic tactics he and his buddy U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen developed to force acceptance of the phony Detroit bankruptcy Plan of Adjustment. This effort, celebrated by Michigan’s nitwit media, left a smoking, $ 491 million crater in Detroit’s post bankruptcy finances. Mayor Duggan has been reduced to chiseling money from demolition contracts. Don’t forget that the $ 720 million bail out plan also turns total, absolute DPS control over to Mayor Duggan and his crack team of demolition contract negotiators. Out of the frying pan and into the fire we go.

This is how Michigan’s devious elites now get what they want, when they want, from an embarrassingly slow and cantankerous constitutional government process which they despise.

Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies

Some boys goes up the trail for pleasure,
But that’s where you get it most awfully wrong;
For you haven’t any idea the trouble they give us
While we go driving them all along.

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“Glaring Example Of The Jim Crow Of The North”

Former Tribal leader appeals for pedophile rights in his last court statements.

Obama’s champion of Northern Michigan describes his conviction on child sexual assault in a way that suggests HE is the victim of racism and bigotry. The former Tribal Chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa & Chippewa Indians wasted no opportunity in placing the blame for his predicament.  From UpNorth Live:

Bailey was sentenced to 25 to 50 years after being found guilty in Grand Traverse County of two counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct back in April.

….Bailey also went on to reference having two all white juries convict him of his crimes.

“To me it’s the glaring example of the the Jim Crow of the north,” Bailey said.

Quite obviously, the Jury plotted his fall from influence and subsequent persecution.

That or the civilized world isn’t yet ready for the complete normalization of those child-adult complex relationships.  Maybe the next time the DSM is revised, pedophiles can have their day as well?

The world is changing very rapidly indeed.

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Real LIFE Event

Right To Life hero to speak April 29 in Ann Arbor

daviddaleidenDavid Daleiden, Who Exposed Planned Parenthood’s Harvesting and Selling of Aborted Baby Body Parts to Speak at Pro-Life Event, Friday, April 29th in Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor, MI. The young man responsible for producing undercover videos that caught high-level Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvesting and selling of aborted baby body parts will be the guest for a Citizens for a Pro-Life Society fundraiser, Friday, April 29th, at Christ the King Parish, 4000 Ave Maria Drive, Ann Arbor, MI.

Doors open at 6:30. The event also features a concert by well-known musician Eric Genuis.

In the last 10 months David Daleiden has become one of the most high-profile, controversial figures of the pro-life movement as a consequence of videos he produced through the Center for Medical Progress. www.centerformedicalprogress.org In these videos, first made public in June 2015, Planned Parenthood executives and staff members discuss the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts–body parts made available to biologics companies such as Stem Express.

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Forensic Audit – Now!

Rhodes Image 1aRetired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven W. Rhodes, now the Detroit Public Schools’ ‘Transition Manager’, just let another financial whopper out of the bag. Detroit Public Schools received about $30 million in U.S. Department of Education reimbursements for the pensions of grant-funded employees, but failed to forward those federal funds to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System. So DPS owes MPSERS $ 30 million dollars, give or take. They are ‘negotiating’.

DPS officials knew of this funds misappropriation in December 2015. Judge Rhodes knew “in March 2016”. Before or after the Michigan Legislature got suckered into passing HB 5296 and HB 5385, the DPS emergency bailout and purported financial review commission?  HB 5296, the $ 48.7 million emergency DPS bailout, cleared the Michigan House on 17 March and the Michigan Senate on 24 March. Governor Snyder signed it as Public Act 54 on 12 April.

Did anyone in Lansing know that 60% of the PA 54 DPS bailout was headed straight to the MPSERS?

If so, why did they not share this little detail with the rest of the Legislature and the public prior to the passage of HB 5296?

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