Gov. Snyder, Sen. Meekhof and Sperker Cotter demonstrating their best use for Michigan Taxpayer dollars.
With that conveniently (and consistently) “overlooked” $3.5-billion in debt, the Mi(a)GOP just handed the Michigan House to the democrats in the fall.
Here’s a not-so-subtle hint.
More to follow…
(5)Nuh Uh.
(2)Donald Trump isn’t the republican nominee, and Ted Cruz hasn’t been mathematically eliminated . . . yet.
At roughly noon on May 4th, after running fourth in a three-man race for seven consecutive weeks, John Kasich finally suspended his presidential nomination campaign (raising the obvious question of, “What the hell took so long?”), leaving Donald Trump as the “sole survivor” of what was originally an eighteen-candidate republican field. And, go figure, before Cinco de Mayo was in the books, various talking heads and keyboard pundits were acknowledging, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that The Donald was now the presumptive republican nominee. However, to channel L. P. Berra, this campaign ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and despite a certain well-circulated AP report, a certain critical milestone hasn’t yet been tallied into Trump’s column, and so June 7th is still going to matter . . . very much.
(7)Nuh Uh.(5)RTA Funding Could Buy All Their New Riders New Cars, And Pay For Their Fuel and Insurance To Boot!
The new Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan is out today with their transportation master plan to soak taxpayers in Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne Counties for another $ 3.3 billion in property taxes over a 20 year period.
RTA CEO Michael Ford released the regional mass transit plan RTA will submit to voters on November 8th under PA 387 of 2012. A 1.2 mill property tax increase and $ 1.7 billion in new Federal & State subsidies will provide four new bus rapid transit lines, 11 cross county connector lines, one regional rail line, and some extended/intensified local service.
Let’s have some fun by subjecting the new RTA regional mass transit plan to some real, pre Common Core, mathematics.
(16)Nuh Uh.(0)
I spend the better part of each day talking to brave souls around the country who are deep in the trenches of the state sovereignty movement. It is truly a breathtaking and awe-inspiring experience hearing from the patriots on the front lines. I hear war stories from the boots on the ground in the great, animated contest of freedom vs. tyranny everyday.
I am both honored and humbled to be in the position to relay this urgent message, and sound the clarion call of liberty upon the masses. It is with a very heavy heart that I deliver the following report to you.
I will not mince words about what I have heard from these warriors. It is a grizzly sight. Everyone is in pain. I hear about tragedies from every corner of the nation. I see what lies beneath the mask of the federal Hydra, and it is beyond the pale. Sometimes, I feel like I need to bathe in holy water after a day’s work.
It is truly horrific to bear witness to the machinations of the beast system as it manifests itself upon God’s kingdom, and savages the greatest country the world has ever known. Watching it slowly snuff the life out of the American dream, as every American value is demeaned and debauched upon unimaginable lengths is gutwrenching. The darkness has enveloped us. The avalanche of tyranny has descended upon us.
(10)Nuh Uh.(5)Take a good look at the picture below.
He’s going to factor heavily in this post (and more importantly, what YOU can do to protect your pocketbook).
{Continued below the fold}
(16)Nuh Uh.(0)
Yesterday, the Oakland County GOP Executive Committee (EC) met for the first time since the delegate allocation count was slaughtered by the arbitrary dictate of Chairwoman Theresa Mungioli. This meant that 503 spots were cut for the August 2016 election, and now hundreds of engaged delegates are going to be disenfranchised during an important Presidential election year. The people who will be tasked with ensuring Republican victory in November have been effectively slapped in the face.
(13)Nuh Uh.(11)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.
“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}
(10)Nuh Uh.(0)Donald Trump has passed through the gauntlet and is the Republican nominee
Its 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.
(20)Nuh Uh.(1)When A Devious, All Too Clever Plan Goes Awry
Retired 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.
This 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.
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)Retired 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?
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)
