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Portrait of a Tax Hiker: Gino Polidori (D-Dearborn)By Nick, Section News
"Basically, this entire package was delivered by Democrats." - Andy Dillon, Detroit News, October 2, 2007.
This is the twenty-first in a series of looks at specific members of Dillon's tax hike caucus. The Democrats hold a 58-52 lead in the House. A shift of just four seats returns control to the Republicans, a caucus, for what it's worth, that held the line in impressive fashion against the Democrats' tax and spend gambit. According to Andy Dillon anyways. Four seats is more than doable. A move to a common sense approach that protects jobs and Michigan families is doable. Just a matter of getting rid of a few bad apples. Today we take a look at a Wayne County Representative who's either got a really bad memory, is in someone's pocket or just plain thinks his constituents are dumb... STATE REPRESENTATIVE GINO POLIDORI (D-DEARBORN)
Let's take a look at a longtime resident and elected official from Dearborn, Representative Gino Polidori. And let's rewind the tape to that fateful September night and October morning several months ago. Polidori voted YES on the Democrats' $800 million income tax increase. He voted YES on the Democrats' $1.5 BILLION sales tax on services. He voted NO on a reform of the MESSA program that protected every single penny's worth of health care coverage for our great teachers while saving $400 million a year that can be reinvested directly into the classroom in the form of lower class sizes, newer books, better supplies and higher salaries for our educators. Polidori's a Democrat from a relatively safe seat in Wayne County. He's a tax-and-spender. No surprise there. The State of Michigan has a nation's worst 7.7% unemployment rate, skyrocketing poverty and foreclosure rates and projects tens of thousands of jobs will head for the State's southern border in the next year alone. We're the only State in the Union to have lost jobs over the last five years and that's in spite of a hurricane that wiped out an entire city down in Louisiana a few years back. So Polidori's votes to raise taxes and kill money saving reforms in the face of a single-state depression don't make any intellectual sense, economic sense or provide any hope for an economic recovery but they do help fund bigger and bigger government (the budget he helped pass is the biggest in Michigan history) and protect the typical Democrat special interests. Tax-and-spend liberals vote that way. I can't explain their mental state or why they think the way they do, only that they take that thinking into office with them and vote accordingly. No surprises. Which is what makes what Polidori has done and said in the last month or so so entirely hard to understand. Let's take a look at a couple headlines on Gino Polidori's own state funded website and his statements that follow. Because there are a couple of doozies... Read on...
First we've got this gem on November 14th, only six weeks after the Representative voted to take $2.3 billion out of the local economy, killing jobs all across the State... "Polidori: $23M Tax Credit for IAC Group will Keep Jobs in Michigan."
Yep, you read it right. Tax credits help keep jobs in Michigan. Less taxes equals more jobs. But don't take my word for it, just ask Gino:
If that's true, Representative, then why the vote earlier this year to raise taxes by record amounts? There seems to be a rather large consistency gap here. In fact, the earlier vote and these statements are diametrically opposed. They're complete, polar opposites. So what gives? If you're a tax-and-spender why go to the trouble of trying to convince us otherwise? Of course the cover-up doesn't end with the tax-hike votes. It appears Polidori recognizes a public relations nightmare when he sees one and has to do something about that MESSA vote too. Which led to this headline on October 8th, only a week after voting to keep $400 million out of the coffers of local school districts across the State... "Polidori: Plan Will Put More Money in K-12 Classrooms--Program would provide funding to hire additional teachers, reduce class sizes." And what does Gino have to say for himself?
But wait a second. Didn't you have that responsibility a week before you issued this press release? Why the flip flop? And why, if you're going to flip flop, didn't you do it in the other direction? Believe me, I'd much rather have had you get it right to protect jobs and help school kids when you were voting and then issue press releases that advanced your tax-and-spend and union protectionism policies. Michigan would be a heck of a lot better off. Then again, when push comes to shove Polidori's got to vote his job killing conscience. He can try to snow us all in later as evidenced by his public statements directly opposing his own voting record.
Follow the money. According to campaign finance reports filed with the Secretary of State Gino Polidori might not even have a job in Lansing if it hadn't been for a massive infusion of campaign cash several weeks before the election. There were a few groups that wanted the man in the legislature and they made it happen. Polidori received $5,000 from Governor Granholm's leadership fund less than two weeks from election day. Could she have called in that favor and demanded that he vote for her tax hikes? Then there's the nearly $9,000 that poured into his campaign coffers at similarly opportune times from the teachers unions. Maybe they got on the phone before the late night voting sessions at the end of September to remind Gino how he got to Lansing in the first place. Or maybe not. Maybe he's not a special interest shill who abandoned his principles to satisfy his liberal donor base. Maybe he's just two-faced after all and is willing to vote one way then smile for the cameras and tell the voters that he believes something entirely different. Or worst of all, maybe he's entirely incompetent and not able to identify his own glaring (and job killing) inconsistencies.
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 Related Links+ Detroit News, October 2, 2007+ Gino + for himself + campaign finance reports + Also by Nick |
It's never a surprise to find a tax-and-spend liberal behaving like a tax and spend liberal. Never. If a candidate or an elected official are up front with the voters from the beginning then how can anything take us by surprise. And sometimes it isn't even a matter of being up front. Perhaps nothing sums it up better than one of my favorite movie quotes of all time... "most times a man will tell you his bad intentions if you listen, let yourself hear." (Name that Kevin Costner movie!)
The surprises come when the tax-and-spenders start making statements and promises that seem to run contrary to their previous statements and actions. They wind up lying to their constituents by telling them they believe one thing while their previous statements and actions tell an entirely different story. And to what end? To confuse the voters? To try to pull the wool over their eyes? Why not just be upfront and honest the whole time? There really is something to be said for consistency.
Then again, I may be selling Polidori short. Maybe he's not just trying to pull a fast one on the residents of the 15th District. Maybe these recent statements are more in line with his personal politics than his actual voting record. Maybe he wanted to vote NO on Andy Dillon's massive Democrat tax hikes. Maybe he wanted to vote YES on the MESSA kill to send all of that money back into the classroom. But whatever on earth could have prevented him from voting the way he'd now so desperately like us all to believe he would have liked to?