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}
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(16)Nuh Uh.(0)120 search results for "bailout"
Cronyism, Detroit, Elections, Michigan, Taxes
Save The Children!
by Jason • • 8 Comments
Are Bailouts The Right Answer for DPS?
(Reposted from JasonGillman.Com)
The Michigan House just voted to give the Detroit Public Schools a $500 million bailout and the State Senate wants to give $800 million.
104th State Representative and incumbent Larry Inman explains it away as a necessary evil. He suggested on the Ron Jolly radio program Wednesday morning, that lawyers warned house leadership that if they didn’t do something, the courts would take over, and it could be far worse. He referenced the Michigan constitution, and its requirement on the legislature to provide funding for the schools.
My guess is that he did not ask the question of the attorneys advising the house “what might happen if every school district subjected the taxpayers to the same challenge?”
YES, the state is supposed to provide an education. The legislature is supposed to “maintain and support a system of elementary and secondary schools.. ” In fact, From the state constitution:
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(15)Nuh Uh.(0)Conservative News, Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Elections, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Opinion, Rent Seeking, Republicans, Taxes
Because giving them even more money has always solved Detroit’s problems.
by KG One • • 13 Comments
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}
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(10)Nuh Uh.(0)Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Republicans, Taxes
Blowback
by 10x25MM • • 3 Comments
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.
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(13)Nuh Uh.(0)Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Part Time Legislature, Proposal 15-1, Republicans, Taxes
Forensic Audit – Now!
by 10x25MM • • 7 Comments
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?
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(13)Nuh Uh.(0)Michigan, Michigan Politics
DPS Down Payment A Major Mistake.
by Jason • • 20 Comments
What are these legislators thinking?
Operation ‘Can Kick’ In Full Swing. (re-posted from jasongillman.com)
Its for the children, right? HB5296, a $48.7 Million bill to get DPS through the school year, met little resistance from our state legislature, with seven senate, and only four house members opposing the final package. How could anyone vote to essentially close the doors? Its a valid question, and the intent should be considered honorable. However, an honest assessment of the overall situation can only remind us that it is with the best intent that we fail our children once again.
If the vote to hand over the money eradicated all debt, and set the course for district solvency, it would be hard to argue against such logic. However, the greater debt and liability still exists, and the precedent is set for the remaining $700,000,000 bailout that is next to come for DPS. Even that number is of questionable sufficiency, and is likely to be higher. Even with a bailout of this magnitude, it would be foolish to think it would be the end of hands out from a district that has produced 25% graduation rates, all the while receiving the highest per capita foundation payments.
And then there is the question of mismanagement being simply benign, or instead as a purposeful quest, evidenced by new indictments of a dozen prominent administrators within the district. Surely this is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Let us not forget also, that Detroit Schools represent only a part of the state’s public education apparatus. To be sure, it is not the only school district in Michigan that is facing obligations that seem insurmountable. What are we to do next when Grand Rapids Schools, Lansing, or even Traverse City Area Public Schools cry “No Mas!” throwing up their hands in futility?
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(13)Nuh Uh.(0)Michigan
Why Are We Bailing Out DPS Again?
by Jason • • 10 Comments
Detroit is flush with taxpayer cash.
Not its own taxpayers mind you, but nevertheless, it has a spigot it can apparently turn on at will. A Granholm era program that somehow still exists and ‘guarantees Detroit HS graduates two years of college will apparently come out of the taxes collected for schools. Even after getting the State bailout money going forward?
Duggan on Tuesday said that in the 2018-19 tax year tax dollars from the growth of the city will start to go into the scholarship fund.
“What the chamber has done is raise the money to create a bridge for that,” he said. “We can’t expect the chamber to raise scholarship money forever. This is the way that it was intended to work. They’ve done a wonderful job in the short-run. We will have funding out of the education tax in the long-run.”
The city forecasts the tax capture, once effective, would provide funding for the next two decades, ranging from $1 million per year up to $4.5 million projected in 2035, according to property value estimates rooted in the city’s bankruptcy Plan of Adjustment.
Money is fungible.
Check.
Ask your legislator how they could allow this to go on.
H/T 10x25MM
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(16)Nuh Uh.(0)Michigan, Michigan Politics
Too Big To Fail
by Jason • • 5 Comments
The stage is set for more mis-'appropriations' ..
How on earth could any legislator demand accountability after voting to pay for the ongoing malfeasance of the DPS?
With a vote of 104-5, the Michigan House of Representatives cleared the deck for the ultimate prize of over $700 Million for continued operations.
Passed 104 to 5 in the House on March 17, 2016, to appropriate $48.7 million to keep the insolvent Detroit school district afloat until the end of the current school year. This is essentially a “down-payment” on a larger bailout package whose details have yet to find a consensus (the House majority wants more education reforms). The bill essentially “borrows” the money from a state account used to pay for college scholarships, and also places the Detroit school district under the same state oversight commission created to oversee the city after its 2014 bailout(see House Bill 5385).
Who Voted “Yes” and Who Voted “No”
“we just need to get em to the end of the school year,” right?
Anyone who thinks there will be a plan from the current legislative slurry to fix the fundamental problems with the DPS is lying to themselves.
Even worse, they are lying to the kids who suffer under the inability of the DPS to teach.
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(14)Nuh Uh.(0)Cronyism, Democrats, Detroit, Government Incompetence, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Part Time Legislature, Rent Seeking, Republicans, Taxes
Whoopie Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies
by 10x25MM • • 19 Comments
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.
Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies
When the night comes on and we hold them on the bedground,
These little dogies that roll on so slow;
Roll up the herd and cut out the strays,
And roll the little dogies that never rolled before.
Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies
Traditional 19th Century American Cowboy Cattle Drive Song
Michigan’s tax-and-spend establishment continues to demonstrate world class tactical flexibility as they pursue their dubious ends. Their latest tour de force is the setup for the impending Detroit Public Schools bailout. Michigan’s legislators are being driven like cattle.
The new state appointed emergency transition manager of the Detroit Public Schools, retired U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven W. Rhodes, announced that the district would shut down on April 8th due to a lack of funds. This chilling announcement came a week after Governor Snyder appointed him to replace Darnell Early, who resigned at the end of February. Darnell Early, for some reason, failed to inform Michigan of the April 8th drop dead date. Judge Rhodes made his announcement four weeks in advance of the projected shutdown in a full court press to get a bailout from our State Legislature.
The first problem here is the State Legislature is scheduled to take two weeks off in the four weeks leading up to April 8th. The last week of March and the first week of April. Judge Rhodes certainly knew this, so the dilatory announcement is unquestionably a deliberate effort to stampede the Michigan Legislature into immediately delivering $ 50 – 70 million to DPS, no questions asked. Two weeks is not a reasonable legislative time frame, rather it is herding legislators like cattle on a two week drive. An echo of the tactics used by Judge Rhodes to ram through the bungled Detroit bankruptcy.
Governor Snyder has been floating an inchoate plan to rescue the Detroit Public Schools since the middle of last year; one which originally envisioned the creation of a ‘bad debt’ shell district and a new, debt free district by cellular division. Wasn’t really well received anywhere, even after he added dissolution of the much hated Education Achievement Authority. As his problems in the Flint water fiasco have mounted, Governor Snyder decided to wash his hands of the DPS situation by throwing $ 700 million at them to extinguish their ‘operating’ debt and return control to the next generation of local thieves elected school board members.
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(14)Nuh Uh.(0)Conservative News, Democrats, Flint Water Fiasco, Michigan, Michigan Politics, Republicans
The Case for Strategic Bipartisanship to Dump Rick Snyder
by shane Trejo • • 11 Comments
In lieu of the Flint water crisis, our very own Governerd, Rick Snyder, has become the focal point of national fury. While grassroots patriots have hated him for many years for his Medicaid expanding, Common Core pushing, tax hiking, socialism-loving ways, the rest of the country is following suit! But what has dismayed me is to see many conservative Republicans defending this turkey. What gives?
To a certain extent, I understand the inclination to defend him. It’s not like Democrats have been fair with their attacks. They have made it into a racial issue, of course. The fat idiot Michael Moore interjected himself into the mess, and everybody hates that guy. They have shirked the blame from the corrupt and incompetent local Democratic city officials, and made Snyder the fall guy. By doing so, they have given grassroots patriots a golden ticket.
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