Michigan's Executive Branch is in a flat spin. In politics perception is everything. What has gone on in 3 months of Snyderism has been a total civic disaster: No Jobs, No Jobs, No Jobs.
It's become so bad, so quickly, PR/Spinmeister John Yob has been hired back to patch up the gapping rip in the fabric of the governorship by attempting to interpret Snyder's faux pas (which are highly embarrassing to the office of governor and his party) trying to put things back in a favorable way; The Executive Branch of Michigan is in a flat spin. A stiffly stubborn and defiant Tricky Rick is sure to take it down even further down to failure uncorrected.
Read Daniel Howes column: "Why' overlooked in Snyder budget plan" 3/31/11, and see where Howes points to the failure of Snyder's one word mission: FAIRNESS.
"KALKASKA AGAIN" SHOULD STRIKE REAL FEAR If you will note from the reference (in Repubteach's recent entry Water Cooler entry, the Kalkaska incident was raised by a third party, not Repubteach) Kalkaska is a signal "event." One of those milestones that shook and shaped the direction of the entire Engler Revolution and resulted in major changes in how Michigan schools are financed.
Eventual passage of Proposition A, which rectified many of the problems of school funding, was a direct outcome of the "Kalkaska Moment." Prop A did, for a period, meet the needs of many school districts, especially like those of rural Kalkaska. However, it was flawed. At the same time Prop A failed certian districts such as Rockford. But rather than build on its strengths, certain aggressive partisans during the Granholm years let it languish and fail. This crisis is fed and fueled by the "disaster capitalism" endemic to the demands of a radicalized GOP/Koch Brothers A.L.E.C. playbook.
In 1993 Powerful Corporate Lobbyists Circled Their Wagons The tremendous lobbying pressure from Consumers Power, the Mackinac Center, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, et al, produced classic media scenes like Speaker Paul Hillegonds (drawn away from his children brought to visit daddy in the House Chamber during one of those late-night sessions leading up to the rush to get school funding finished by Christmas Eve 1993. Under great pressure from Business, Hillegonds, called to the House foyer. There he was to be literally surrounded by these business-is-first lobbyists seeking a "good deal cut" into the pending school funding legislation. They surrounded Speaker Hillegonds in the manner wolves surround their quay, intense and demanding.
The outcome of such events,etched a vivid image; and convey something noteworthy of informing novice Rick Snyder as to the historic facts surrounding that crisis: Engler, with all his more than two dozen tax cuts and slick parliamentary/political shenanigans, acted in a very different manner than that of Snyder. JOHN ENGLER POURED MORE MONEY INTO PUBLIC EDUCATION, NOT LESS.
Engler's support for public education was to become much more over time. His generously in the second half of his tenure as governor would be considered, in this new coercive and negativist Teapartisan environment, totally rejected and fervently protested by the tax-haters who have inhabited the party and now the Legislature. Most notably the Know Nothing Leon Dorlet, daddy of the big pink pig metered at the capitol curb for weeks.
DID YOU GET THAT? JOHN ENGLER, THAT ICON OF GOVERNMENT AND TAX CUTS AND TOUGH TALK, ADDED MORE TO THE REVENUES GOING TO EDUCATION.
Yes, the teachers' professional association did pay a price in terms of loss of certain areas of their interests, but good things for Michigan's school children came out of it. Kalkaska's kids got their school up-and-going and from the looks of the present school plant, and newer community facilities built for youths, they have done reasonably well, until Snyder.
Among the lobbyists who haunted the halls of Lansing during this time ('93) was Dick DeVos. This scion to billions was developing his bitter antagonism to public schools even then; he, and wife Betsy, have gone wild subsequently. This divisive coulple has aggressively chosen to become a national scourge; spending millions of their children's hand-me-down inheritance to foster Republican against Republican, division and dissention, bitter rancor in many states; as far west as Utah and in the South in places like Missouri and Virginia.
If you recall, as surely you must, the Dick & Betsy push to pass the 2 to 1 rejected voucher proposal which was DeVos backed had large negative political effects. Their effort helped to undermine the national election for GOP president G.W. Bush by throwing Michigan to Al Gore and leading to Florida and the highly controversial Supreme Court's tragic decision that put GWB in the White House. The voucher campaign also caused Engler and Betsy to fall out with each other. Betsy, most recently, pictures herself arm by arm with Chris Christie of New Jersey, the nation's ponderous bully-boy provocateur and tormenter of public servants and teachers> This is Betsy's latest foray into destructive ideological warfare. Interestingly, The prototype for Christie was John Engler.
Kalkaska! How can any political party call for and support the undermining of public education?
Education in a neighborhood school supported and beloved by the community and guided by the traditional civic-minded school board members, who were often business people and professionals, were once respected and honored.
Not now, and not anymore. These Det/News blogs over the years have contained an unrelenting venom and countless vituperative rants for which the News' editor and his staff are guilty for exciting. These published sentiments reflect a systemic anti-intellectual strand that has destroyed the comrade of the commons and poisoned the politics of our entire state. The hatred and ill-will ginned up here is palpable. Now, at this very low moment, we cannibalize ourselves in our own toxic opines and dark-think.
Dwalt, I have seen what we have done to with "poison politics" to destroy our better selves. We are rank failures in art of good government. In politics, perception is everything. Now 100 and more Kalkasks await a clueless Rick Snyder. (Actually the latest count is over 140) All this as the nation looks on in disbelief and repulsion.
The nation's negative perception of our state's culture will hurt us mightily. Dwalt, you and I will live to deeply regret this outpouring of ideological distemper.
The high hopes and the sincere prayers of Michigan citizens is for a better Michigan, a place of peace and prosperity. But our darkside indulgences are pulling us back. We seem helpless to break ranks and resume the climb upward and onward.
Many of us had hoped what appeared to be a political outsider, clean from our mucky politics of the last decades, would point the way out. A majority of voters hoped Rick Snyder would truly unite us in an honorable and pro-active fashion. But, no, the appetite for "red meat" politics and reprisals has pulled us back and Rick Snyder with us; back toward the pit of our own destruction.
How sad. How disappointing and how hopeless a future for our children we are creating by degrading their public school heritage and children's futures with our mean-spiritedness and corporate greed..
We must repent and re-learn honest compromise and the goodwill evolving from a willing cooperation in our politics and legislation or we lose everything we value.
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