Awkwardness in the House: @CindyGamrat is withdrawing each of her amendments, one-by-one. There are 23 on a list I saw. Twenty-three.
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) April 28, 2015
This better have something to do with Plan “B”.
‘Nuff said!
(5)Nuh Uh.
(1)Has MITA's Spending Now Slammed Into Its Members' Financial Limits?
MITA (Michigan Infrastructure & Transportation Association) just added $ 205,000 to the SafeRoadsYes! war chest yesterday. Not much when you consider that they have already lavished $ 5.19 million on SRY. The Detroit Regional Chamber‘s ‘Powering the Economy’ PAC political committee, on the other hand, went one better and added $ 250,000 to the SafeRoadsYes! war chest yesterday. Dwarfs their $ 125,000 in contributions during the regular reporting period. The Detroit Regional Chamber contribution far exceeds the $ 17,105 DRC reportedly had on hand only a few days ago. Someone has given Powering the Economy a lot of money this week, but we won’t be privileged to know whom for three months. Both of these contributions were made to SRY on April 27th, three days after the closing date for the SafeRoadsYes! pre-special general report.
SafeRoadsYes! has evidently burned through the $ 8 million plus they received in contributions during the regular reporting period and is now heading towards a $ 9 million cash burn. Hard to tell how much SRY have spent with any exactitude, the latest figures from April 24th show expenditures of $ 7.212 million. But they had a balance of $ 843,482 on that date which is presumably gone or going quickly. Expect more thrilling stunts and stimulating advertising in any event. Their war chest just got reloaded.
The paltry late contribution from MITA, taken together with the outsized contribution from the Detroit Regional Chamber, suggests that MITA is scraping the bottom of their member’s bank accounts. Or that they are employing a new form of campaign contribution concealment, feeding contributions through DRC’s Powering the Economy so contributors’ identities won’t be reported until after the election. Their servants in Michigan’s media reported the outsized involvement of road constructors in pushing Proposal 1 this week and it hasn’t played well with the voting public.
Will the Proposal 1 fight decapitalize Michigan’s road constructors? Will they raise their bids to recoup their political expenditures, further draining Michigan’s road funding? Are MITA and DRC gaming Michigan’s campaign finance laws to avoid any further embarrassing disclosures? Or have we just found out what $ 1.2 billion in additional annual contracts are really worth in profits to Michigan’s road constructors?
(11)Nuh Uh.(0)Check out the latest installment from MediaNews Group who appears to have taken on a pro Prop 1 slant.
With one week until the special statewide election next Tuesday, the Safe Roads Yes ballot campaign is deploying teams of volunteers to call voters and track down unreturned absentee ballots over the proposed constitutional amendment
linked to boosting road funding $1.2 billion annually[No it DOES NOT. That is disinformation, Chad.]. The campaign wouldn’t divulge who will be on the bus. [maybe an AFSCME stooge?]“I don’t care what side you’re on, everyone agrees Michigan’s roads have gone from bad to worse, and they’ve got to get fixed,” said Roger Martin, spokesman for the Safe Roads Yes campaign.
“It is the only solution before us.”
That so, Roger? Your boss doesn’t think so.
Asked by @TimSkubick if the ballot proposal fails, @onetoughnerd replies: "Then we have to start over." #MiLameDuck
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) December 18, 2014
You know, it’s become typical of these creeps who get elected to office. They always start believing the lies they spin and overload their asses.
Some of us out here do have memories, you know?
(26)Nuh Uh.(0)
Not willing to be out lied by their frenemies in Michigan’s business community, the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) created an entirely bogus propaganda by crushing an old school bus with a piece of bridge, complete with guard rail. It will be a featured propaganda for their ‘Getting Schooled in Infrastructure’ tour which commenced in Flint today. You are allowed to speculate on their altruistic motives.
Note the ‘white shirt’ law enforcement officer congratulating these union pranksters. Saginaw County Sheriff William L. Federspiel with a new dye job? The same Sheriff who bailed on this year’s Ann Arbor Hash Bash at the last minute? His ‘honor students’ in Saginaw took a breather so the good Sheriff could visit the only county in Michigan with a higher murder rate? Oh, I forgot, he doesn’t want any of his sensitive deputies exposed to the horrors of Saginaw, the city. Unless they can ride around in an MRAP. How much damage does an MRAP do to our roads, might you ask?
You can bet dollars to donuts he won’t sic a motor carrier officer on this illegal, unsecured load. Under any other circumstances, a trucker hauling this load around Michigan would get an impressive collection of ‘green stamps’ and an overnight stay in the crowbar hotel. An opportunity to try on Federspiel’s natty new black and white jail attire. Who said political convenience doesn’t tip the scales of justice in Michigan?
Favoritism never crosses the mind of our Michigan leaders. Too busy engaging in media opportunism.
(21)Nuh Uh.(0)Endless supplies of throwing stones used for media purposes.
On the way to work yesterday morning, it dawned on me that I had seen a certain triangle shaped piece of road that was missing from the pavement somewhere else.
Then I recalled the Snyder/SafeRoads ‘rock giving tour.’ The travel business of the Governor handing out pieces of taxpayer owned property to media types around the state has been a boom. {word has it he is negotiating a deal with rock tossers from around the world for our surplus road bits}
Given the recent photo ops given by the ‘progressive’ governor, Maybe we can get Rick to travel back up here to ‘patch’ our roads too?
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)SafeRoadsYes! Has A Phantom Contributor
Today was the deadline for the last campaign finance filings with the Michigan Secretary of State before the May 5th vote on Proposal 1. SafeRoadsYes! filed five late contribution reports and a pre-special general report. Contributions supporting Proposal 1 now exceed $ 8 million and, as you might expect, the roster of SafeRoadsYes! contributors reads like a Michigan road constructors’ directory. SafeRoadsYes! expenditures now exceed $ 7.2 million, and SafeRoadsYes! still has more than $ 843,000 yet to be spent. Of course there may be massive contributions yet to be made which would not be reported until after the election.
MGM Grand Casino and FireKeepers Casino contributed $ 50,000 each, presumably to curry favor with the Lansing power elites. BlueCross/Blue Shield and the Michigan Township Association each threw in $ 100,000 which was picked from your pockets by ObamaCare and your property taxes, respectively. Dick DeVos, after having his stooge knife Representative Gamrat for not supporting Proposal 1, got in late with a $ 50,000 contribution from his Alticor investment group.
There is one phantom entity in the SafeRoadsYes! late contribution reports which is worth investigating. An organization called ‘Powering the Economy’ gave $ 75,000 on 22 April. The problem here? ‘Powering the Economy’ doesn’t exist in either the Michigan LARA corporate database or the Secretary of State’s searchable PAC database. So who are they?
Best guess, the merry screw ups at the Detroit Regional Chamber have created a new ballot question PAC to replace their recently terminated – and heavily cited – ‘Detroit Regional Chamber PAC II‘ ballot question PAC. DRC PAC II earned eighteen citations from the SoS since 2013 for filing screw ups. DRC PAC II filed a dissolution notice on 02 April and paid the $ 875.00 dissolution fee on 07 April. ‘Powering the Economy’ has the same address as the Detroit Regional Chamber, One Woodward Avenue in Detroit – which used to be known as the MichCon or ANR Building before Dan Gilbert bought it. And DRC has trademarked ‘Powering the Economy’ as one of their signature catch phrases.
Somebody is ignoring Michigan’s campaign finance laws. Not just ignoring them, trampling them. But this has been a routine practice during the Proposal 1 proponents’ campaign. Our Attorney General is supposed to enforce these laws, but he hasn’t been exactly active on this front despite Schuette ostensibly opposing Proposal 1. So all we can do at this late date is tell you about another scam behind Proposal 1 and let you spike this dragon at the ballot box. Sweet revenge is $ 9 million of your opponents’ money down the drain. Vote May 5th.
(20)Nuh Uh.(0)Found on the side of some possible MDoT leased passenger cars in Cadillac today.
I guess they need this proposal to pass so that Rick Snyder can get his train set built from Ann Arbor to Traverse City after all! All he needs are a few transportation ‘Ho’-Scale helpers to really push this thing over the rails and onto voters.
Waiting to be ‘tagged.’
I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can.. I think I can..
(15)Nuh Uh.(0)Michigan Department of Transportation passing even more cost through to taxpayers.
The failure that is Kirk Steudle and the Michigan Department of Transportation continues to demonstrate that it cannot plan nor manage taxpayer funds efficiently.
RightMi.com readers might recall that the MDoT has been spending taxpayer dollars to babysit equipment that other people own. In the last few years, it has amounted to a drop in the bucket when compared to what is a bloated state budget of 52+ billion smackers, right? But buckets eventually fill from all the droplets as we all know, and the spigot in this case is opening more. From the Lansing State Journal:
At the current lease rates, that means MDOT would have to sink about another $4.4 million into lease charges before it is able to put the cars into service.
That line is sufficient to point out that Steudle’s comment earlier in the year was nothing more than lip service.
“These cars are costing us money right now and we’ve got to figure out how are we going to … stop the bleeding,”
As the old joke goes .. “Whats this ‘we’ s##t Kemosabe?”
(17)Nuh Uh.(0)TRIP Boosts Their Lies 109% to Get Your Vote
The proponents of Proposal 1 never envisaged the losing position they now occupy two weeks before the vote, so their media shills have resurrected the titillating lies projections of a road builders’ organization called TRIP to bolster their case. Here are the most visceral quotes from Michigan’s two largest newspapers, demonstrating their well-honed propaganda skills:
“Michigan’s poor roads threaten to derail its economic recovery, according to a new report by a national transportation research group.”
“The report says that 38% of Michigan roads are now in poor condition, up from 23% in 2006. It also found that 45% were listed in fair condition and 17% were listed as good.”
“The report estimates that Michigan motorists pay an average of $686 in increased operating costs, including vehicle repairs, because of the state’s poor roads.”
“By 2025, the share of major roads in poor condition is projected to increase to 53 percent,” TRIP said in its report. “Keeping roads in good condition by performing minor maintenance is far more cost-effective than waiting until roads are in fair or poor condition when it becomes far more costly to make needed repairs.”
“According to TRIP, driving on rough roads costs Michigan motorists a total of $4.8 billion each year in the form of extra vehicle operating costs, representing an average cost of $686 annually per motorist.”
”That’s the conclusion of a report released Monday by TRIP, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that researches, evaluates and distributes information on surface transportation issues.
The Detroit Free Press only identified TRIP as “a national nonprofit transportation research group” in this pivotal story. They were a little more candid in a previous story, so they can’t claim not to know what TRIP is. The Detroit News identification of TRIP was every bit as dishonest. Only our ‘newer’ media is more truthful, if still not entirely accurate:
“The annual TRIP study, conducted by a national research group funded by transportation industry interests, pegs the yearly cost at $686 per Michigan motorist.”
“TRIP findings have long been cited by road funding advocates, including Gov. Rick Snyder.”
TRIP obligingly released a raft of new lies in a series of press releases on Michigan roads at the Detroit Regional Chamber (a kindred IRS 501(c)(6) organization, more on this below the fold) on Monday. These stories are an update to TRIP’s January 2014 lies which we covered in January. The comparable examples of TRIP’s 2014 lies (since removed from the web) are:
TRIP’s 2015 report on Michigan annual excessive vehicle costs is a $ 2.5 billion (or $ 329 per motorist) increase above their 2014 lies projections. A 109% increase above their 2014 lies. Far beyond any assessment of the 2014 to 2015 deterioration of road & bridge conditions in Michigan – even the totally bogus PASER ratings. Since the $ 2.3 billion (or $ 357 per motorist) 2014 TRIP number didn’t move you to vote for Proposal 1, the new and improved $ 4.8 billion (or $ 686 per motorist) lie is expected to change your mind on Proposal 1. They think you are that dumb.
So is TRIP a “nonprofit transportation research organization”? Sounds like an independent, credible source – right? Do the adjectives ‘nonprofit’ and ‘research’ give you a high level of confidence in their pronouncements? Does ‘organization’ or ‘group’ give you the impression that hundreds of researchers are assessing road conditions across the country? Perhaps you should dig a little deeper than our lazy, lying media scribes.
(17)Nuh Uh.(0)The current battle is to simply stop the inertia of decline, but we need to follow through.
“Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.” There seems to be some dispute as to whether this was actually said by either General George Patton or Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, but everyone seems to agree that one of them said it. Whether we’re discussing a military battlefield or a political one, it’s pretty sound advice either way, often more commonly worded as, “be selective about the fights you pick.” A logical corollary of this maxim is that if you’re going to accomplish anything, then (a) you should have a realistic expectation of what can be accomplished, and (b) know why winning this particular battle will advance the larger goal. And, as any strategist or tactician worth the title will advise, the smart thing to do is to already have a plan for follow-up in place . . . because you’re going to need one should you actually win.
This is where Michigan’s constitutionalist insurgency has done a marvelous job of dropping the ball post-2010, and as a result now has a task that’s four times harder than it needed to be. The upside is that this fight is still winnable, if we stay focused on a realistic expectation of what we’ll actually accomplish by winning it.
(23)Nuh Uh.(1)
