Tag: Wayne County (page 2)

OK, I present: Exhibit A, which spreading bogus information should be bad enough considering he's a Lefty Progress Michigan digital media "operative".  Ooooo, spooky.  Now, for a second dose of well deserved butt-hurt I present Joshua's buddy as Exhibit B, which really goes to illustrate what mindless, regurgitating lemmings those on the Left truly are.  Reagan invented the EITC?  #FAIL.  It was Lefty Democrat Senators Russell Long and Lloyd Bentsen who rammed through that disgusting wage subsidy for the "working poor" into 1975 tax code.  Even a simple search on IRS.gov clearly states that.  Attributing the EITC to Ford, or that Big Government Moderate idiot Nixon who inspired the Negative Income Tax scheme is fair game as far as I'm concerned.  But, hanging the creation of the "free lunch" EITC on Reagan?  No.  That is a lie.

Progressives.  For those that are unaware, Russell Long's father, Huey Long, was the original "wealth redistribution" and "tax the rich" Kingfish from Louisiana way before our two Twitter trolls or their Obamessiah were an itch in their papa's pants.  

Yet, it is folk on the Left today like Joshua, and Kevin, who dare call themselves something with the word progress in it?  Another #FAIL.  When has The Left ever changed?  They are Socialists, and dimwit ones at that.

A Time For Choosing.

"We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning."

That 1964 Speech sure makes as much sense today as it did then.  Nancy Classless is as wrong to hand out "free lunch" EITC in Michigan, as Gerald Ford was on March 29, 1975.  

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

"About 25 Wayne and Oakland County GOP leaders and elected officials huddled Wednesday at the Suburban Collection Showplace to coalesce around one candidate. About 11 members reunited Thursday at a hotel to interview the possible write-in candidates the party could get behind, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson said."

...

"The confab was necessary, Patterson said, because the party can't get behind Bentivolio, the Republican who made the Aug. 7 primary ballot. Bentivolio raises reindeer and launched his candidacy to challenge McCotter on issues like government spending and borrowing.

"While there is an individual on the ballot, the people deserve a choice, and that shouldn't be an accidental choice," Cassis said."

Wow!  

No, scratch that.

 "Wow!" Doesn't even begin to describe the level of hubris and arrogance displayed by the Republican kakistocracy on this one.

These people know what running for office entails.

They know how, where, and most importantly, when the process takes place.

To even imply that they couldn't have gotten involved in the race simply reeks of gross competence for a person of their station.

And on top of that; they felt the "need" for multiple, secret close door meetings.

And only one member had the integrity to step forward and actually admit that they were actually there.

What's even worse yet?

"Patterson said Bentivolio's priorities were too extreme for him to accept." - The Detroit Free Press, June 7, 2012

And this is compared to...

♪But those of us who really like to go, are really cheap you know...♪

♪We want to see some van Gogh (so you better cough up some dough)...right now!♪

♫All we really need is Art! ♫

Along with congressional and state senate maps, the state legislature will also redistrict the state house of representatives. The current state house map was drawn by Republicans, but has hardly any partisan slant at all. Its architects thought it would elect a large Republican majority, but control shifted to democrats in 2006 and 2008 before returning to Republicans in 2010.

Michigan Congressional Redistricting: Two Possible Maps
Michigan Redistricting: Two Possible State Senate Maps

See the current state house map here: MICHIGAN'S 110 HOUSE DISTRICTS

State house control is more likely to vary since representatives are limited to three two-year terms and elections are held in both presidential and off-years, unlike the state senate.

Many of the rules for legislative district maps are the same as for congressional district maps. In particular, the Apol standards require that there be a small number of county and city/township breaks. These standards cannot legally bind future redistricting plans (LaRoux v. Secretary of State), but it is likely that any plan passed will at least come close to following them.

One major difference between the congressional and legislative standards is that populations for legislative districts are not required to be exact. They must be within 5% of the ideal population. For the Michigan House of Representatives, the ideal population is 9983640/110=89851. The lower and upper thresholds are thus 85359 and 94343.

This makes it easier to avoid breaks. Many counties do not need to be broken at all. The first part of my analysis of the state house redistricting will focus on Wayne County. Wayne's ideal number of districts is 20.26, so the ideal population for a district is 91029.

Census shocker: Detroit's population falls to 713,000
Interactive map: 2010 Census information, by state

Michigan's population was earlier announced to be 9883640, down .6% from 2000.

This means that the ideal district sizes are
Congress: 658,909
State senate: 260,096
State house: 89,851

The new number coming out...
Detroit: 713,777, down 25.3% from 952047.

What a difference a day makes.  

Yesterday the Senate gave it another try and managed to approve the measure 29 to 8.  

Seems like common sense to give voters in the state the option of preventing their own taxes from going up while their home values go down but 8 Michigan Democrats have, apparently, never met a bit of financial sanity they couldn't refuse.  Especially when lobbyists are in their ears arguing how much more desperately than homeowners they need $253 million.

Thank goodness someone in this state finally stood up for taxpayers, though, and told the lobbyists to shove it.  The Detroit News caught up with the resolution's sponsor, John Pappageorge:

"Homeowners shouldn't be strapped with rising property taxes while watching their home values drop," he said.

Common, meet sense.

Because that whole status quo thing?  Not working out so well and sending folks scrambling out of the state.  The Ivory Tower reports this morning that metro Detroit has seen the steepest population drop of any region in the entire nation over the last two years.

Read on...

Alas.

The Lansing State Journal tells the governor's dirty little secret this morning - a full 1,000 of those at-risk employees are corrections workers on the front lines of the battle to keep violent criminals behind bars.  

How, you're asking, could the state fire 1,000 of the brave men and women who daily supervise career criminals, rapists and murderers to keep them from wreaking havoc on each other and Michigan families without serious consequences?  And the answer is, they can't.  

The administration isn't without their own creative solution, though.  Yesterday, while everyone in the press was distracted by the budget they took another under-the-radar action whose consequences could be disastrous.

As many as 3,500 to 4,000 prisoners could be paroled by October under an executive order Granholm issued Thursday. The governor ordered the State Parole Board to review the status of 12,000 prisoners who already have served minimum sentences for potential release.

(Mel) Grieshaber (executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization) urged state officials to be cautious about early releases.

"We think there are a lot of bad guys in there who potentially are going to get out," he said.

Bad.  Idea.  And we know that, at least privately, Michigan Democrats admit as much.  Remember, it was less than two years ago that every Dem in the state, from the regressisphere to the Capitol to the local county organizations made the forceful argument that Michigan state government had "cut to the bone."  There was nothing left to cut.  Nothing we could eliminate.  Tax hikes or bust.

Now, suddenly, we can release 4,000 convicted felons early and fire 1,000 law enforcement officials without serious, potentially violent consequences?  C'mon now.

Read on...