Detroit: Behemoth 'Motor City' Whale Fights for Its Life as Snyder's EM & Scavengers Circle

As the sea of concern and support is siphoned away by Grover Norquist & the Michissippian TeaPublican  militant minions (Michigan Tea Party Republican) made up of many of Michigan's ideological scavengers, the large and once awesome form of the 'whale' metaphorically called the "Motor City Behemoth" becomes clearly visible: gasping for air, suffering in its darkest hour, it's thick hide filled with scars, spears, broken harpoons with long and tangled lines, and wounds to defy description.

Detroit Public Assets: Stripping and Scavenging anything and everything of Value
(16th Cent. Woodcut Royal Maritime Museum)

The Behemoth ‘Motor City’ Whale Fights for Its Life in Grover Norquist’s Drained & Drying ‘No Tax’ Clawfoot Tub

Deprived of the ocean of support it needed to prosper and survive, the 'whale' has been purposefully, more and more cut-off from normal human concern. Dry-docked by years of political neglect and blame-speaking by Too Far Right Republicans from out-state and confined by the noose of competing suburban elites, the gigantic 'whale' is now being carved up. Its great hulk is crushed by predators and scavengers, desecrated and purposefully neglected by a strong and very angry, repriseful,  TeaPartisan led lock-stepped Michigan's state government--all four branches of which have chosen to let it die, as it were.

The growing stench is unbearable and Oh! the inhumanity of it all.

Republican Leadership Sees Advantage in Detroit City's Economic Implosion & Seeks to Lay the Blame on the role of Government and Democrats

Here's how Saul Anuzis seeks to dole out blame for the downfall of Detroit City. Unwilling to make his own personal statement of fact, Anuzis did so by forwarding to Republicans statewide this generic piece from a third source titled “Detroit Nears Bankruptcy.“:

"It's hard to think of many social experiments that have more disastrously failed. Now many of these once flourishing cities are hollowed out shells, while around them suburbs and increasingly exurbs flourish away from the deadening influence of urbanist politics. None of this affects the hold of progressive and urbanist ideology on true believers; if anything, they believe even more passionately in the cause."

“Obviously the problem is that we haven't spent enough on enough tenured teachers, haven't written enough new regulations and established enough new bureaus to enforce them, haven't published enough white papers by enough credentialed planners, haven't extracted enough taxes and provided enough services. If we could just tax the suburbs and exurbs more heavily and spend more of the money in the cities, all would be well." 

Source: "Detroit Nears Bankruptcy" in The American Interest, March 11, 2012.

So the downfall of the city falls on its current residents, both in Anuzis' ideological mindset and in terms of affected Detroiters, with an  inability to buck the system and rise above the withdrawal of elite support or to obtain  further financial commitment. Thus the crisis will be framed by harsh critics in terms of today's challenges. All relevant references to the lead-up, decades of systemic abandonment and Jim Crow shortcomings, will be dismissed as 'old history' or irrelevant. But such is NOT THE CASE.

The failure seen today is long-term failure, deliberate neglect, which has inhabited wrongful decisions made time and again by the powerful, not by the state’s  poor or the victims of cruel conservatism.  A working faction of opinion leaders and corporatists have for years opposed and undermined an effective collaboration and bi-partisan responsibility for such root causes of the great Detroit failures of industry, banking, real estate, religion, or state partisan politics.  As they allowed the core city Detroit to be undermined and eroded of its viability, things escalated to this danger point, made much worse by the G.W. Bush Great Recession. Yes, we may include the majority minority citizens, those who now dwell in the shell-shocked remnants of a once great and thriving city of commerce, the arts, and industry.  They do have a more minor role, but out of the negativity, unemployment, years of assistance and Jim Crow they were and are divided and confined to powerlessness. They have no status to pull the levers of intervention and lack the ability to tap the resources of investment and renewal other than their vote and personal efforts in community or houses of worship--wherever support can be gathered.

Just How Did Detroit's Supporting Tide Recede? It took years and in involved the deliberate abandonment of Detroit by key elements:

• The need for manual labor, as during the auto boom years and the great wars, receded. Automation and foreign competition for superior product and the ravishes of overseas outsourcing have taken down the tide that floats us all in Michigan's world of automaking. One important and outstanding impact of the loss of auto related jobs is the loss of these well-paid jobs to men and women of color!
• Businesses have fled the core city. Hudson's fled downtown in a final shoppers' collapse. GM retreated from its historic former headquarters to the more moated and in-crenelated waterfront - the former the Renaissance Center complex.
• Urban grocery stores are now limited-service, often over-priced. Fresh fruits and vegetables are in limited, or non-existent supply.
• Black and minority children are relegated to neglect and abandonment by a complex list of social and spiritual maladies.
• The lack of adequate transportation for people confined to an urban area without personal transportation is daunting and a virtual impediment to jobs and getting to and from jobs on time.
• The core of remaining corporations and heavy-hitter investors has marched retreat. Business Leaders for Michigan has gathered the shards of the former Detroit Renaissance into a very aggressive posture:  “We want the power and we are prepared to use state government to get that power and financial, physical control. There are assets we will take or remove from urban Detroit via our support and full participation in PA #4, the Emergency Manager scheme.” Two leading and important A list corporations illustrate the BLM's own internal instability: the exit of both Comerica and American Axle from Detroit.  And the B list is long.
• Religious and sectarian forces  focused for decades around Dick & Betsy DeVos and the American Federation for Children have moved against the Public Schools of Detroit. Dozens of neighborhood schools are closed and gone. A wildfire crop of for-our-own-profit private charters paid with public tax dollars has been franchised by the TeaPublican 2011 super majority and the take down of 'government' schools is moving ahead unabated. Hundreds of career minority teachers are gone.
• The Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit has over the last decades slammed shut dozens of parish/neighborhood churches. Some of the many thousands of abandoned dwellings and structures which house crack dens and child rapists are properties the Church owns or controls.
• Republicans and Corportists' ham-fisted desire to achieve homogeneity over unions, especially public service unions, has led to a litany of anti-union legislative grab-backs, health care limitations, retirement reductions, tax on public sector pensioners, and all manner of other devices such as dues control, and other on-going legislative intimidation.
• Suburban/Urban political and governmental infighting rages on.
• The withdrawal of Michigan State Police from the urban freeways will become retrogressive and threatening.
• The Black Middle Class flight from Detroit is a strong tell-tell of the growing disillusionment of successful minorities in regard to a productive and sustainable quality of life in urban Detroit.
• The level of social and familial problems in the core city, while it actually mirrors the kinds of problems or concerns of the nation's entire population (e.g. unwed mothers, many juveniles themselves) would appear to undercut future enculturation and success for those locked in this urban ghetto.
• Drug use is rampant. The failure to stem the highly successful pipeline of drugs from origin to destination on Detroit's city streets, while alarming and sinister, with its many criminal off-shoots, does not take from the drug culture the fact that even larger numbers of white Americans are customers than are Blacks for these illegal substances.
• The number of felons arising out of Detroit's morass (unemployment, early drop-outs, drugs, and vagrancy)  bode horribly for its future. With unemployment in or near the mid-twenty percent range for these many youths, what can be the possibilities for them? Even if they serve their time, when released they're felons and are negatively 'marked for life,' frozen out of good pay jobs.
• The cut-off of revenue sharing from Lansing [around $4 BILLION cut from Detroit and other municipalities by Michigan’s legislature 2001-2010], while at the same time billions of taxpayer dollars are currently being poured into commercial coffers is part of a deliberate business 'bailout' system.
• Plus the clever political chicanery designed to present an appearance that Michissippian TeaPublicans are not Wisconsin Walkerites, while forcing governmental units to face EM management and throw out contracts,  belies TeaPublicans are disassembling Collective Bargaining by a insidious, forced mechanism.

The Truth is out. 

Central planners in the pro-business cabal of Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Michigan Insurance Lobbyists, The Business Leaders for Michigan, the National Heritage Foundation’s  spin-off-The Mackinac Center for Public Policy (Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center's donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation with $69,151), and rogue elements best identified as anti-public schools/anti-unions Amway Corporation and Americans for Prosperity/Koch Bros.  whose out-state contributions funneled through the 2010 Snyder Campaign $900K] have chosen to make the historic downturn under the G.W.B. Great Recession  their moment to utilize economic emergency turning it into prized 'opportunity' for achieving long-sought goals via Disaster Capitalism.

The advent of the Emergency Manager-style fascism is especially onerous. Such subterfuge and dictatorial power, in the hands of a Corporatocracy and band of highly-skilled and ruthless corporate law and accounting firms,  means drastic, undemocratic cancer will ravish our state's governmental units--all in a blatant and ideological attempt to achieve a long lasting homogeneity over liberalism and Democrats and groups, such as unions, with political abilities and powers.

-----

And then there is this: a haunting and threatening history of extreme racism related to the history of Detroit. Former Appeals Court Judge, the late Glenn Allen put it on point.  To Wall Street the shadow of Detroit is  a metropolis with a strong history, of a "low threshold" for Jim Crow, racial unrest, and violence. That fact is never 'out of mind' with investors.

“Judge Allen "was a paragon of public service and personal integrity," said Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Maura D. Corrigan upon hearing of his passing. Glenn Allen had served, among many other things, as Special Counsel for Legal, Fiscal and Legislative Affairs under Bill Milliken from 1971-74.

FINAL OBSERVATION:  Responding to crisis with "The Ghost Mayor,"  March 17, 2012,  Charlie LeDuff, Pulitzer Prize Winner, has sounded a clear alarm: Given the possibility that the validation of the anti-PA 4 Petition Drive suspends the EM operations until November's election, Gov. Rick Snyder's options are narrowed. "The governor might then use the only stick left in his bag. Let the city drown. According to LeDuff:

"Already vendors and contractors are not getting paid and the city will run out of cash in a month. That means cops,  paramedics and tax collectors won't get paid. Ambulances won't get fixed. Parks won't open.

Under that scenario, you can expect a long, hot, bloody summer." 
(emphasis added)

LISTEN UP ALL PARTIES: Financially taking down Detroit City is not ultimately about political winners and losers; it's about a city with hundreds of thousands of men, women, boys and girls and what is to become of their welfare.

What is done, the spirit with which it is done, and the potential of suspending and abandoning the provisions of the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act if Detroit is not financially made solvent for its necessary operations beyond April, will have far greater and more crippling, far-reaching negative impacts than this state and its present governmental mindset can bear or handle.

What then?  Game over?

Related Slate: "Michigan GOP's Power Grab Thievery: Patterson's 30 Year Jim Crow / EM Plot to Steal Detroit's Royal Jewels & Liquid Assets"

More on Detroit and Emergency Management on the Gazette.

Original.

Snyder’s Michissippi (Michigan) Revival of 21st Cent ‘Jim Crow’: Imposing ‘EM Plantations’ Across the State & Nation

Pushed by elite big money controllers (Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) & Mackinac Center for Public Policy), Rick Snyder's inventing 21st Century Jim Crow. Snyder has acted with vigorous, uncompromising and a self-aggrandizing false flag - "Relentless Positive Action"; utilizing the powerful punch of angry and irrational citizens-calling themselves "patriots." These malcontents sent to the state legislature are Know Nothing hotheads with a very narrow and targeted un-civic, anti-democratic agenda which is destroying Michigan as we once knew it.

Snyder is leading a precedent-breaking rampage of 'red neck' legislation designed to undercut and destroy local autonomy and the voter rights of citizens in targeted jurisdictions as well as passing legislation against labor, including receding many of the collective bargaining rights signed into law by Republican Gov. George Romney, 1965. Who benefits from this crusade? "Workers are over-paid" Betsy DeVos and the invitation only Business Leaders for Michigan who have been bailed out and enriched with other people's tax dollars and ridiculously over-generous pro-corporate legislation!

Snyder’s Michissippi Gives Rise to the Revival of 21st Century ‘Jim Crow’ via TeaPartisan Legislation Imposing ‘EM Plantations’ Across the State... and the Nation.

Ferris State University's Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

A Strange Paradox: Historic Jim Crow Was Born First in the Cities of Northern States
"Jim Crow" developed in northern segregated cities BEFORE it moved south and regressed post-civil war reconstruction in the South. Now in a parallel universe, Snyder's EM Plantation reinvention of economic and racial repression heralds a Neo-Jim Crow method to enforce and implement repressive racial segregation and economic subjugation via quasi-legal and economic means.

Snyder & Dillon's usurpation of urban civil and citizens rights, the Rad Right's abolition of the voter's franchise, and the literal liquidation of the public's storehouse of taxpayer acquired and sustained assets, via the 2010 blitz of enabling legislation passed by the TeaPartisan Super Majority in Lansing is under way, Jim Crow is on the rise.

Snyder's invention of 21st Century Neo-Jim Crow bodes very negatively for the future of racial harmony and skews progress away from eventual positive outcomes. Is it any wonder Detroit's Black middle class/individuals have chosen to take their future hopes to another state, many choosing a new locale in the New South.

Segregation (complete separation of races) was developed and refined in Northern cities where small concentrations of people of color could be confined to certain areas. In the reactionary 1980's and '90's following the take down of Reconstruction by Republicans racists transplanted Jim Crow into the angry South.

The kind of segregation under the status quo ante bellum days of slavery was less of a rigid system of separation of the races than was the apartheid practiced in many northern cites. The model of physical separation into designated areas and/or ghettos the root of Jim Crow developed in northern cities. In slave days, the intermingling of races was much more nominative, whites and blacks were intermingled in everyday southern life, housemaids, nannies, workers, etc.

More casual and daily contact was involved in the culture and daily life in the South than was found in the rigorous and aggressive behaviors so often associated with the Northern Jim Crow urban segregation-as it developed and was practiced many areas and cities of the North. Following the failure of Reconstruction, the North's version of Jim Crow fit perfectly with the rise of the KKK and radical race hatred and fear that dominated the next decades of ugly race relations and regression in the Deep South and as Jim Crow continued in the northern cities where it was first practiced. Several southern states still have Jim Crow laws on the books. Some of these laws draw distinctions mirrored in the actions and legislation of Snyder and the TeaPartisans in Michissippi.


Fact: The Boston Tea Party Was A Criminal Act
The adoption of the Revolutionary incident of the Boston Tea Party as an archetype for this faction's modus operandi (means to overreach and grab excessive government power) has a strong erroneous message to deliver-civic crime is not virtue.

Original Occupy Boston? Warning flyer against the corporate interests
and monopoly of the East India Co. November 29, 1773

The Boston Tea Partiers disguised themselves as savage Indians (to throw off blame) and committed economic terrorism (against economic rivals, themselves 'bootleggers') by deliberate criminal acts-destroying highly valuable cargo. The subversive text running just below the banners ('Don't Trend on Me,' the 'Just leave us alone' howlings, and their banishing of sidearms at the ready) is that these astroturf cells have been ginned up and are entirely controlled by elements traced directly to the Koch Bros.' Americans for Prosperity, Grover Norquist, and finally a nasty religious fundamentalism which fuels the TP rabble. They did as they were trained/told, and the disunifing public outcome (in the service of such anti-government elites such as Amway, the Waltons of Walmart and the Koch's) has fallen us all to bear.

The operating myth of Norquist's severe tax limitation movement is carried on by elevating the vision of a vicious felony, the glorification of a violent criminal act. This vision involves starving Uncle Sam (by any and all means limiting taxes and revenues) into losing strength and vitality, until having become so emaciated, Uncle is subsequently unable to fend off being manhandled into a bathtub, now so shriveled and weak, as to be forcibly drown by these activists. This is again, the fanciful and ugly depiction of criminality that propels Norquistian radicals and the TeaPartisans of the sort Grover continuously fans into flames.

So when tax starvation leads to bold repression of minorities and the poor, public employees and teachers, especially those in despised inner cities such as Detroit; the rise of Neo-Jim Crow naturally and tragically follows.

Michigan's Public Act 4, 2011
The advent of regression under Snyder/Dillon led Jim Crow centers around the imposition of the newly stiffened and much more dictatorial PA 4 designed to literally change a democratically-run Detroit into a Jim Crow Plantation where the citizens of Detroit are disenfranchised, humiliated, limited and corralled and herded by the whims of highly compensated corporate attorneys trained in methods to dissolve systems, sell off valuable assets, and counterman the will of the citizens.

There's a clear distinction between civil liberties, which are the laws protecting citizens from unjust government power and control, and civil rights, in which government power is used to protect the rights of a marginalized or minority population from other citizen groups. Therefore, this is a case of rogue Corporatists ordering CEO Snyder and radical elements now in total charge of the Michigan Legislature via the insurgent TeaPartisans going on a racial rampage.

These ideological elements, who have full control of the entire four branches of the state, are recklessly acting against both civil liberties and voter rights; subjecting minorities to unjust governmental power and control.
The legislature of Michissippi has been the sponsor of a new 21st Century "Jim Crow" that will metastasize and spread to other areas, even re-infest the South-still under lingering bigotry and racism stoked by Republican strategists.

Snyder's Michissippian model, 21st Century Neo-Jim Crow/EM Plantation(s), constitutes a very evil and volatile lapse- capable of tearing the fabric of our nation with economic racism and bitter minority blowback...there already is talk of Snyder's EM/Jim Crow model spreading to other states.

On the Reader:
More on the history of Jim Crow imaginary visit the Ferris State University's "Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia".

And the real story of the Boston Tea Party by Thom Hartmann based on the only first-hand account by George R.T. Hewes (Video).

More on Emergency Management issue in EM Plantation/Jim Crow Series in "A Shout Out to the Overlords of Michissippian EM Plantations (Michigan EM)" - "Jim Crow & Hank Payne Call for Detroit EM Martial Law: America’s First Urban Apartheid EM Plantation" - "High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View" on the Gazette.


Original.

The Gizzi-Monster and the Raging Radical: Gingrich Gone John Bircher Rogue

Concerning the John Birch Society (JBS) John Gizzi writes braggadocioishly in support of the Newt's pledge to slog on to Tampa's GOP National Convention - counting down 46 more states. "Gingrich never formally conceded to Romney and reports were widespread that he did not call to congratulate the primary victor," on the heels of the trouncing The Newt took in Florida Tuesday.

Welcomed into the "fold" at the Michigan View is that old Bircher Gizzi, the salt and pepper maned-wolf with the Dirksenian-gravel voice, that wily codger represents the old, but still angry JBS. The ghost of John Birch is still at it. JBS never misses a good chance to wedge issues nearest and dearest to their fossilized hearts and their dunderhead mentality. THEY LIVE IN 60 YEARS OF HEMLOCKEN CASKS OF ANGST AND BITTER VENGEFULNESS stemming from their ongoing exile from polite and reasoned civility-due to their untoward behaviors and subversion of the political process for gnarled pleasure and the company it creates for them at gun shows and Tea Party beer halls.

Old Birchers are in their senior glory with Newt! Gingrich's our Guy!

Gizzi showed up, invited, at the Republican Mackinac Island Leadership Conference September of 2011 as a star presenter and has subsequently been comfortably settled into a feathered bed column at The Michigan View. Great. Gizzi joins with Saul Anuzis and a a"set of ardent stragglers" who have found a niche in Michigan GOP politics over the years. Saul is a disciple of Human Events and a close ally with and Newt the orfanatorio promoter. Saul is cloven to all things Extreme Far Right.

Following the rough and raw politics of insider insurgency and dark conspiracy, Saul Anuzis (Maven of HUMAN EVENTS) is at the tipping point of being so anti-government and anti-tax (as is his bosom buddy, Grover Norquist - whom Saul hosted at the GOP Mackinac Island Conference in 2009) as to have become a practical/activist anarchist.

Saul, a life-long political wonk and partisan advantage seeker, feels right at home with the grandiose/homicidal tendencies of Grover Norquist, who dreams of regicide, drowning an imperial government shrunk small enough to be "drown in a bathtub." If that isn't graphic enough, try viewing Grover as doggedly committed to a Pro-Death-to-Government-commitment and a pre-pubescent dreamer set out on a career of trying to achieve that end.

Saul has been chumming with and promoting Newt for a long time. He and Newt were together on Mackinac Island at the Bi-Annual Leadership Conference where Newt ginned up an overflow crowd at the Grand Hotel's Ballroom. Newt laid out a scheme for then GOP Legislative Leadership tailored to disrupt and obstruct former Gov. Granholm and make all things economic and tax-based more difficult; to bring Granholm and Democrats down. Senate Leader Mike Bishop did just as Newt had proposed (Bishop was hectored by Gingrich before that huge pro-Newt crowd in the Ballroom) and made obstruction the rule of the day- shutting down Michigan Government and pushing the state further into planned partisan failure.

Prophetic in his warnings, Reince Priebus, the GOP National Chairman, spoke to the insider crowd on the island September 2011 prophesying and exhorting them:

"National Republican Party chairman, Reince Priebus, urged party activists to rally behind the nominee - whoever it is: 'There is no such thing as an absolutely perfect candidate. Only one perfect person has walked the earth,' Mr. Priebus said. 'WE'RE GOING TO WIN THIS ELECTION BY ADDITION AND MULTIPLICATION, NOT DIVISION AND SUBTRACTION.' "

(emphasis added) 

Obviously Priebus did not understand the MO of the Birchers and the blood-lust style Newt has for a fierce, pitched, no-holds-barred battle and wild mythical mayhem; Newt sees himself right up there with Churchill and Gen. George Patton! Newt is way out there-as though as historian Connop Thrilwall noted "Alexander had appeared to him, armed for combat."

Gizzi and the Old Birchers love this sort of imbroglio; it's their favorite sandbox game. However, the "who can-be-the-most-radically- conservative (troupe of would be nominees in the GOP primaries) throwing sand in each other's faces will not restore Michigan or the Nation to sound policy and economic recovery.

Those who yearn for backroom power and subsequent elevation to prominence as Anuzis hankers, include: Gizzi himself, Clark Durant (son of Mr. Bullhorn, Rad Right heckler-Clark's father), and all those who serve the Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity via its grip on Michigan and Wisconsin, Ohio and other states via The pre-packaged legislation piped into state bills under the radar via The American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.).

All those who slavishly serve the aggressive Corporatocracy and those politicos (who still hold to towing-along with JBS) are dangerous and offensive to our cherished traditions and civil rights.

"United we stand divided we fall."

Speaking of lack of unity and going it alone! What about Thomas Dean Sellers, Bloomfield Hills, owner Dean Ford, national John Bircher board member? Sellers has given Rep. Ron Paul a sizable contribution. What a subversive thing to do! Sellers wayward act makes it one "big stick" less-a-bundle for the JBS goal promotion of Gingrich or does it !/?

Ideological idiocy is just one Michigan primary victory away for Gingrich.


Original.

Hide It Under a Bushel NO, Let It SHINE: Dr. Wolfram’s Tiny Point of Light

It is surprising what a tiny shard of light can do in a darkened environment like the mind of Gary Wolfram. Now Professor Gary wants to talk about "community."

This is a Response to Gary Wolfram in "A Return to Community" posted in the Detroit/Mackinac News on August 25, 2011.

The dear doctor professor spends all his time as an apologist for the "market" and a being a relentless critic of public matters as they stray from his economic bible. He is majorly bent upon "a need to point out something that is going wrong and offer a solution to the problem" to use Wolfram's own words.

Dr. Wolfram is a market fundamentalist. Like Dr. Ron Paul, he is also a fringe dweller with a devoted audience, including what Hugh Hewitt has labeled "whack jobs". That being said, a moment of revelation has come to the good doctor: Community is central, critical.

So much of what this greenpea, self-serving, Chamber of Commerce servicing TeaPublican Super Majority in the Michigan Legislature has been devoted to is the destroying community in the name of business protection and promotion.

Community has been the preferred target for the attacks. The community and public service are being attacked and trampled with every session of this ill-fated, depression promoting, jobless jihad used by the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Chamber of Commerce to get its own agenda passed.

Bringing down a proud and productive state is a nasty, hard job, however these Karl Rovian, Koch Bros. servants are becoming infamous for their tenacity and cold-hearted, heartless behaviors. Reason and collaboration toward lasting solutions is out.

Wolfram is part of the Jindal crowd of public policy:

"Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, an ALEC alum and the 2011 recipient of ALEC's highest honor, the 'Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award,' repeatedly praised the power of obstinance, proclaiming to ALEC members that when legislating, 'it pays to be stubborn.' 'He added, 'I don't care what china we break in the process.'"

If McLellan/Mackinac Center, the Club for Growth, Grover Norquist crowd get their way, the Michigan march to the establishment of Michissippi as s dirt poor, impotent state is sure to succeed.

While watching a performance of the Hillsdale College Players Wolfram, the professorial curmudgeon and political critic, had an epiphany. Sometime in the evening, amid the tasseled fields of ear corn, smothered in the sweltering Hillsdale summer miasma, Prof. Gary thought about what he was experiencing: community. Looking about the theater and scanning the program our professor discovered that this wonderful, electrifying performance he was experiencing was truly revelatory of how people in one location can and do work together for a common purpose. Hitherto, with so much of Wolfram's efforts directed toward slicing and dicing the public sector and attacking the way people thrive on art and performance-the culture of a community-this was a truly insightful moment in the doctor's maturing experience.

Dr. Wolfram turned quickly to his favorite Rolodex of philosophers and pundits for personal insight and meaning during this his one moment of revelation. Quoth the good professor, "I was reminded of De Tocqueville's observation that voluntary associations were the characteristic institutions of American life." 

In an instant the darkness of "market fundamentalism" gobbled up Dr. Gary's enlightenment. What if we, as a state and nation, could accomplish "good things" via voluntarism, take the "burden" of taxes off the businesses and achieve idealistic "community" where things are done at the expense of personal time and effort, gratis; freed from the necessity of raising taxes.

As the tarry night-of-the-soul oozes over Prof. Gary's tiny moment of light, we are reminded of what has been brought on by his ardent work to make the Market King of America. From the New York Times:

"At least 23 states have made huge cuts to public education spending this year, and school districts are scrambling to find ways to cope. School foundations, parent-teacher organizations and local education funds supported by business groups and residents contribute at least $4 billion per year to help public schools throughout the country."

This kind of reliance on the good will of community to take up the slack (on a purely volunteer basis) is becoming the unrelenting new Michigan reality: the product of Wolfram's unflappable work to make profits more important than people, commerce more vital to everyday life than human community, brotherly love.

Prof. Wolfram has us pointed along the sad, sure path to a failed state called Michissippi.


Original.

Michissippi’s Shock & Awe: Business Managed Democracy Hangs by a Slender Thread

Snyder's re-invention of Michigan into a northern version of Mississippi is being met with anger and recall activism. Citizens are having a hard time getting real news about what the Business Managed Democracy coming out of Lansing, heavy-handed and top-down, means for them and their children/grandchildren.

Look out! Soon the penetrating light of National Media will be turned, focused on Michigan's large number of recall efforts.

Citizens are increasingly agitated and are vowing not to take it anymore. What they see on the economic horizon, thanks to Nerd Snyder and the Run-Away Train/ Super-Majority of nasty TeaPublicans is totally unacceptable. The loss of over 38,000 jobs will have a thunderous impact on the state.

Snyder has let job creation go by the wayside, while he aids and cheers on the radical agenda of the Koch Bros. et al American Legislative Exchange Council (A.L.E.C.) and its over 600 corporate/BIG BIZ handlers. Putting off job creation until next year is a dumb and disastrous Nerdcentric policy. If the desperate plight of over 400,000 workers unemployed in Michigan does not motivate the Nerd to action, what ever could?

Snyder knows how to inflict pain, but does he know how to comprehend and share in the terrible pain he has created? Perhaps the recall efforts will be a turning point in this regard.

Think about what is underway. Over two dozen recall petitions are filed or in the works. Subjects of the Recall Efforts are: The governor and a wide range of members of the state house and the State Senate.

An active and rapidly expanding effort to put the nefarious and dangerously out-of-control Super-Majority of uber-radicals out of office is well under way.

What happens in tomorrow's Wisconsin recall elections will be a giant signal to voters in Michigan. Success there will sweep over Michigan like a wind-driven grass fire.

Early on we have heard EFM manager Michael Flanagan say just "stay calm" and Mackinac Center's Godfather, Attorney Richard D. McLellan say "don't worry about the recalls, they'll not succeed."

Now, longtime observer, and astute analyst, Bill Ballenger has put out a new, very revealing and disturbing word (If you are a Rad-Teapublican or Rick Snyder): IF JUST ONE RECALL IN MICHIGAN SUCCEEDS IT WILL SPELL THE END TO THE SNYDER "JUGGERNAUT"!

Business Managed Democracy is anathema to community and to Michigan. We can deal with it now, finally and directly. We have seen what the TeaPublican agenda entails and it is totally unacceptable to average Michigan citizen

We have seen what a willful and ill-advised TeaPublican faction can do to the national economy. Today's precipitous fall in the stock market (worst since 2008) wiped out well over a trillion dollars of invested wealth, touching a wide range of people who are trying to stay afloat, while the little dictator, Grover Norquist, and Tea Party radicals continue to call for no new taxes and no compromise - hamstringing government.

The Wisconsin Recall results will spell a real revelation of the will of the ordinary citizens, if there is recall success there, LOOK OUT Snyder and TP'ers the broom will be probing deep in your dark corners.

Original Post.

The Michissippi Nerd (Michigan Governor Rick Snyder) on Parade

The Snyder led 4th of July parade features a famous icon, not Uncle Sam, but Little Bo Peep. The Nerd and his napoleonic army of TeaPublicans are marching to the tune of independence, NOT with the old guy in bright patriotic colors of Ol' Glory leading the way, but the ideological stooges are towing along behind Little Bo Peep-who has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them.

The real Grand Marshals of Snyder's 4th of July Parade are: Milton Friedman (Freedom to choose/act independently of all others), Ayn Rand (selfishness is a virtue), Grover Norquist (Never raise taxes, Kill government), Newt (Tiffany) Gingrich (the states can go around the Federal Government with extreme measures and should), and Richard D. McLellan (Have I got a 'godfather plan' for Michigan!).

These powerful influences heading up Snyder's Parade are so "with" the Nerd that he's not able to act or think in the real world where the rest of us live are struggling to survive the Great Bush Depression II.


Original Post.

Daniel Howes, The Detroit News/Mackinac Center News & Ignoratio Elenchi

Response to Daniel Howes in "Crises necessitate emergency managers" in the Detroit News on April 22, 2011.

A commenter reporting in from (Mt.) Olympus, Michigan has grown giddy breathing in all that anti-public sector gaseous blather. Defending our sacred right to ignore the poor, with the bromide: "Our poor are rich by comparison." This intentionally misleading assertion does not account for what it means to be poor and unemployed, or worse yet mentally ill and/or unemployable in present day Michigan.

Food banks, homelessness, and re-sale shops, all of which now abound, testify to real needs or our neighbors. The new blight and seedy/greedy "licensed to steal" store fronts e.g. the Cash Advance and the Title Loan Outlets are covering the old Main Streets like a black-leafed kudzu.

Then comes Danny Howes: His message, blessed by the billionaire Koch Brothers and "Amen-ed" by the crudely partisan TeaPublicans, is: "The EM law would not threaten democracy if elected officials and those empowered to represent public employees instead trained their finely tuned political antennae on financial reality and charting a path out - because someone has to get the job done."

Howes might have had help developing the physical/mental flexibility to swallow his own tail like unto some mythical beast, when he so twists his flawed analysis of the serious nature of Michigan's "one state depression" into a contorted mis-truth such as his screed of local government: "Boil it all down, and the biggest rap against Michigan's stiffened Emergency Manager law is that it's anti-democratic."

The entire nation is looking on. Michigan has become the focus of dread and awe. Is this what a Republican Majority cowed by a smattering of anti-tax, "we got ours, go get your own" rowdies can do to a powerful state in real trouble? 

Lead into the taller Weeds, Howes.

You're taking opinion in this state further to the bottom; in a manner that is so blithely arrogant and condescending that its bitterness, in you opines, cannot be assuaged or sweetened. In fact, Howler Howes, your interpretation of the Emergency Finance Managers' purpose runs 180 degrees to Gov. Snyder's envisioned purpose of that new act: Preventive Help.

"An EM could privatize public services, restructure departments, rewrite supply contracts, assess the affordability of pensions and post-retirement health-care obligations and - the Big Kahuna - reopen collective bargaining agreements."

The Big Kahuna, as Howes so inelegantly labels this crisis, is demeaning to the citizens, first responders, teachers and a fleet of others you give over to the privatizers and the high-fee lawyers-all of whom like bottom feeders, will harvest for themselves much of the savings you pretend to believe will be garnered by this Corporatist Take Over of Michigan's local governmental units. 

Remember the top yearly pay allowed for an EFM is limitless, even beyond the salary of the governor. Over 300 EFM's have been "trained" that is run through a crip course. Danny, how many places do you think they will be needed?

There are scores of DetNews regulars who will agree with Howe's assessment: "There would be scant need for a new law empowering state-appointed outsiders to make the hard choices for municipalities and school districts if the people hired to make those choices in the first place actually did their jobs." But agreeing with Howes' pronouncement does not detract that the coming crisis, on top of the current crisis, the crisis created by Snyder's cut off of historic block grants is part of his Retro-Englerite advisers' Rube Goldberg tax-and-shift; the outright giving of approximately $.2.2billions to Snyder's base, the business community stolen from education, the poor, the elders. And what have these businesses done to earn bonanza-this gift outright?. .....That's right, Nothing!

Howes has blackened the reputations and integrity of every local governmental official in the state when he snidely concludes in his delusions and deductions: local governmental officials as a class are slackers: "(T)hey mostly don't," do their jobs properly or professionally. Put down that tarry broad brush.

Howes sees Michigan as diseased. Everywhere he sees, " symptoms of a disease whose cure begins with an honest, disinterested, financially sound assessment of where a locality or school district stands, what its revenue is and how the two can be reconciled free from the push and pull of power politics." Howes' shortsighted criticisms are invalid and decidedly injurious to the Michigan commons.

How over-extended is Howes' logic. He picks the "richest county" in Michigan to use as a dashboard for the state: Oakland Co. Even in the Kingdom of Patterson, roads turn to rubble, snow goes un-plowed, pot-holes do their damaging havoc, but Howes sees a bit of hope (in what may still, yet be a downgrading ) in Oakland's AAA credit rating.

Collectively all of these "incompetents" (as outed and so labeled by Howes) see the emanate dangers and the coming storm: "It is completely understandable for elected officials, union leaders and (semi-informed) members of the news media (caught an MSNBC rant on Michigan's new EM law, lately?) to rail against the apparent anti-democratic hooks of the controversial EM law." But Danny is more knowledgeable than these, more sure of his prejudices, he is, for sure his own favorite "expert". Yet Rachel Maddow has shown light in a very dark corner; Howes obviously must look away.

The problem is in Lansing, Danny. It's the deadhead TeaPublican Legislature, it's their inability to see that things are - actually in an upward trend. The main problem is they're fans and water carriers of A.L.E.C (The American Legislative Exchange Council- a secretive far right/pro-corporate and secret legislative bill mill) and also perennial partisan enemies of unions and public servants. The public reactions will continue. Recall efforts are underway. When 1,000 march in Marquette, even a paperboy knows there's real discontent and change in the air.

If Howes wants to be a cheerleader for Grover Norquist and his anti-civic gaggle of bathtub-drowners and silly "NO TAX" Pledgers, let him go to D.C. and ply, take up, his twisted trade on K Street. 

Howes would have us believe its all about lack of money-state revenues. No Danny, it's much more, it's about a culture of greed and resentment from many encouraged to whine rather than participate; People talk radio agitated and refusing to share in the responsibility and obligations of freedom and citizenship.

Gov. Milliken faced similar budget crisis problems; his good faith and belief in people; and a consensus to find real, across-the-board sharing; and even a temporary raise in taxes combo, brought us through former tough times. 

Look around, the wide-spread Koch Brothers' coup being rammed through state legislatures across America; represented in part by their paid mercenaries and the front they created, Americans for Prosperity; It becomes clear the Mega Wealthy have an "bum's rush" agenda designed in their favor.

This is an all-out attack on the Middle Class and a usurpation of dreadful opportunity created by a G.W. Bush induced near-Depression-crash of our national economy. For Bros. Koch, Amway, The Wal-mart Waltons, et. al. It has become an prime "disaster capitalist opportunity" to cash in on economic woe to carry out ideological and partisan reprisals and massive "take-backs."

For shame, Howes, in all of this you've become part of the greater problem, not the cure.


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The Grover Norquist & Newt Gingrich Tag Team Goad The Nerd (Rick Snyder)

Gingrich outlined the program for the National Republican Governors which outlines the radical tack that is being pushed on states as an attempt to enact anti-union legislation nationwide. The purpose is to de-fund the unions and thus "enhance" GOP chances in the 2012.

The Nerd is swept up in this morass.

Michigan is being beset with vicious attempts to sweep unions from their ability to participate in public policy formation and retain their rights to pensions and benefits, and most significantly retain the "right to bargain"-collective bargaining as public unions.

Gov. Scott Walker implicated Snyder as part of a network of governors with whom Walker plots.

Snyder has used legislative trickery to camouflage his earnest efforts to de-certify the role of unions. Certain bills on the fast track through the Legislature contain elements which will accomplish "Walker's Wisconsin Anti-Union crusade."

How is the Gingrich mandate moving in the Nerd's Michigan?

Yesterday, the (Michigan) State House passed a bills package granting emergency financial managers the dictatorial power to toss out union contracts and summarily dismiss (fire) elected officials in cities, counties, townships and school districts operating at a deficit. And barring those officials (in this extreme economic downturn which is the real cause of their budget shortfalls) from the right to hold office for years into the future is troubling. Punitive? That's putting it far too lightly.

Dangerous to democracy? Absolutely.

Karl Rove, soon to come to Livingston Co., has reinforced the Norquist/Newt Gingrich gameplan, both as a point person and a fund raiser. Rove clearly outed his purpose in engaging the unions in "do or die." Karl revealed the GOP national campaign is targeted to undercut the Democratic Party with the unvarnished purpose of achieving partisan homogeny in 2012.

Gingrich told told both the American Enterprise Institute and the National Republican Governor's Association: "The first great laboratory (using the state legislation to attack unions) for replacing the left will not be in Washington. It will be in the states.

As the Walker remarks state: Wisconsin is "the first domino."

Can the Nerd trickery be far behind?

Original Post.

Who guessed Snyder & TeaPublicans would brazenly put Michigan into further Depression

The "big" budget crisis in Michigan is not at all what it appears. It's capitalize on hard times, take maximum partisan advantage. There's a concerted effort across many states to achieve certain long-sought goals of the far right: Union Busting, elimination of public employee benefits & pensions, cut & shift the tax burden to ordinary people, cut welfare and unemployment, and unbridled attacks on public schools & more. Michigan has had budget deficits in the range of this one before, but never has it been mishandled as it is now! Michigan is being cut down, to achieve certain selfish objectives.

There's "big" trouble alright, it's a "big manufactured" crisis; hype piggybacked on the national crisis brought on by George W. Bush and cohorts-who singlehandedly brought down to near ruin this nation financially. TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS were ruthlessly harvested from working folk. And today much of THE LOOT sits on the sidelines UNAVAILABLE navailable to small businesses who desperately need it.

To do the kind of "blitz" legislation that is found in the current rush to pass House Bill 4215 (which literally disenfranchises communities governments and schools, puts in place DICTATORIAL CONTROL and throws out the vote of the people) and passes it on to the governor has another purpose. It's dirty politics: Revenge and Reprisals.

When the full scope of the Draconian "Cuts only" budget are announced by Rick Snyder, many of the Tea Party supporters want to know that there is in place (passage of H.B. 4215) A STRONG MECHANISM TO PICK UP THE PIECES WHEN DOZENS OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS & LOCAL UNITS OF GOVERNMENT " WHICH WILL GO UNDER DUE TO SNYDER'S DRASTIC & UNPRECEDENTED CUTS having their direct debt-creating effect: A 33% cut in revenue sharing, with a harsh punishment factor to undercut pensions and benefits in units affected.

Raising taxes, if only for a short period, to get out of the state's crisis will look more than golden compared to the slaughter house/meat axe Snyder is about to apply across our state.

In the enumeration of the communities mentioned in the details of H.B. 4215 (now being steamrolled through the legislature on party-line votes) one finds these targeted "financial failures" are mainly minority/Black communities, some would say "who cares?" That's as it stands today. However, under the proposed legislation's sweeping new powers vested in Snyder Regime's complete control, by way of managers and "firms" appointed under Andy Dillon, could be bring down many other locations-both rural and urban. The axe will fall on many shocked and unsuspecting units.

Time to have more input concerning H.B. 4215 is desperately needed. The rush is the "bums rush" to mickey the public out of the entire process and achieve a Quickie: A huge partisan victory for those who ultimately favor "bankruptcy" for states.

How historically dangerous are these Know-Nothings; servants to Grover Norquist? And really who is Citizen Norquist that he should have command of our America?

Original Post.

Kill Michigan, Kill Michigan: Howling Hyenas Take a Jaundiced View

Comment of the Michigan View on January 20, 2011.

As predictable as frost on a pumpkin, or that the offal left by a lioness, in the Serengeti, will be visited by the lurking hyenas, Michigan Views' muckrakers and Hard Right Trolls jump to steal their scrap of the lion's "kill."

Kill Michigan, Kill Michigan

Is there a better way to push Michigan's economy and prospects further into the bath tub for a vicious "drowning" (as suggested by anti-government, uncivil Grover Norquist, Wolfram, Payne, Finley, MacCen, et.al.) than to savagely and prematurely begin their vicious ideological attacks on newly elected moderate Gov. Rick Snyder-trying to stymie Snyder's programs, proposals, and leadership-right at the starting gate?

Be aware these attacks are not optional, they are vital to the success of private, elitists, and their bottom lines. Controlling and hectoring from these curmudgeons are classic tomes that are totally mandatory, necessary to protect the private and clearly corporate interests who want what they want, damn the consequences?

Keep this up boys, and it will be the Granholm v. legislature disaster (deja vu) you all had so much sport ridiculing and vilifying-while ignoring the downward slide of the Michigan economy and life quality.

If we want the state to come back, suggest we vaccinate the Hyenas for rabies.


Original Post.

A one nostril false grunt from Nolan: It’s not my pigs that stink

Response to Nolan Finley in “Oink, Oink” Detroit News Dec 15, 2010

Nolan may have had the chore of swilling the pigs back home years ago.

Now so dandy-like, in his 3 piece editorial suit, he takes a gloating parting shot over the relatively minor part that congressional earmarks play in the trade-off, oiled process of compromise and commerce as practiced for eons in the U.S. Congress.

This new stiff-necked pledging to a small-minded, small-soul-ed, pinch penny, that Dickensian Scrooge, Grover Norquist, who owns the BIG Promise Pledge book on all those signers who pledge to only, always say "NO!" to new taxes, is utter pigsty nonsense!

Norquist has lit a sour gas smoldering cinder in the coal-hearted misanthropes who are marching to Washington under the guise of a resurrected Tea Party, claming to be Founder-blessed "patriots."
Those Norquist-controlled Congress people have taken an impossible and absurd pledge, a pledge that their oath of office makes dishonest and unconstitutional.

The U.S. Congress has an obligation to raise the taxes and revenues to carry on our government. To refuse to raise any new taxes-when the economic ship of state is taking on water like the Titanic in its final 2 hours- is as nonsensical as some other "ideological nut" may attempt-getting willing pledgers-to likewise "never spend or allocate" new revenue, even if raised, refusing to meet the ongoing obligations and responsibilities of our federal government at home and abroad.

Pigs may wallow in gooey slime, but even they don't attempt to eat muck-out of pure instinct for survival.


Original Post.

Cato’s Not So Clever Charter School Contortions (ala Andrew J. Coulson)

Response to "Charters hold key to saving state big education dollars" by  Andrew J. Coulson in the Detroit News on December 17. 2009.

Cato says: "Charters hold key to saving state big education dollars"
This presentation by the Libertarian Cato Institute is very revealing, both for its content, its timing, and its distortions.

The assumption that Charter schools are the answer to the problems of achievement in academics is both wish-full thinking and deceptive. But the fact that the thrust of this appeal to the public and to the legislature appears in the News at the 11th hour the 59th minute, in the middle of this present "crisis," is very eye-opening and gives great insight as to the thinking of the local brand of radicalism that sees taxes in such a dim light. This piece lights up the dark corner of a class of ideologues who would eliminate the "burden of taxation" for the education of any child in a "public school."

The essential attitude of Cato is akin to the thought that is behind the choice over the use of a public toilet faculty. If an individual had a choice between a "public faculty" and a "private" one, the choice would always be for the private loo.

Let's look at what Cato's Andrew J. Coulson has revealed unto us.

1.) Cato: (I)f Michigan converted all its conventional public schools into charters (also known as public school academies), that tsunami would explode into a refreshing mist -- complete with fiscal surplus rainbow.

RESPONSE: Charters are operating in many areas where fine public schools exist. In fact many private schools simply converted to fit the "charter" designation in the early days of Michigan's charter school experiment. Many of those operations, even given public tax dollars have not survived. Charters exploit the atmosphere of created by the "manufactured crisis" over public schools encouraged and promoted by the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, WalMart heirs, and the radicalized national Republican Party. The GOP, over the years since Reagan and still today, has promoted and festered anti-public school sentiment as a special "wedge issue" headed up by such rogues as Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. Religiously the GOP argument against public schooling has come from James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, both ardent foes and strong supporters of parents "pulling their children from public schools." The alternative for education monies, of course, is parochiaid a long sought and strongly defeated effort. Ask the Amway DeVos' about how easy it is to get a state like Utah to vote the voucher. Their well-funded effort there went down like it did in 2000 in Michigan by a whopping 2 to 1 margin. Does that tell you how the voter thinks?

2.) Cato: Based on the latest (2006-07) figures, the average charter school in Michigan spends $2,000 less in state and local tax dollars per pupil than the average district school. So the savings from a district-to-charter student exodus would add up to $3.5 billion annually.

RESPONSE: This overly simplistic assertion is only the tip of a dirty, acidic iceberg. Those savings are based in many ways on the fact that "truly public" neighborhood schools exist and continue to serve the charters as a safety net. The charters love to have a "full house" of coupon bearing children enrolled on head count day, after that they can eject the "bad apples" back into the public system.

Like cowbirds they don't see any problem in letting the other birds utilize their funding and facilities to educate their "rejects." The lower costs are built on the backs of many young teachers looking for any place to obtain a teaching job even if it doesn't pay well or provide adequate benefits, and even if it shorts their possibilities of a "public school retirement" down the years ahead.

The recent news from the News has actually pointed out that charters can be tiny "kingdoms," "fiefdoms" where operators and the proprietary interests hire and fire at-will, practice simony and placement of family members and fellow travelers in positions paid by tax dollars which have been siphoned off from the local, neighborhood school. Charter schools don't have to pack into the "foundation grant" the various mandates of Michigan law such as busing, including busing for private schools within their districts.

Charters also avoid wherever possible the high costs of physically and otherwise handicapped children (including blind children) and other students with special needs. Cherry picking for charters is a year around educating-for-profit activity.

3.) Cato: "...Michigan's charter schools not only spend 20 percent less than district schools, they also have 20 percent fewer pupils per teacher.

RESPONSE: One of the "boutique" draws of charters is the system's ability to cut personnel costs, other costs associated with a public school employee's benefits and retirement, the costs of a building built to a higher standard by far for a "public school" than the special zoning and building codes sought and obtained by the chartering industry, which has allowed them to build OSB, balloon trussed, and vinyl clad polebarns (akin to pig farm buildings) for their operations. God forbid one ever becomes engulfed in fire!

Get the facts: The faux public charter school owners have bragged in national media about making up to 12 percent profit from educating children in their privately operated and privately governed proprietary facilities. This means that chartering involves a middleman level of costs and control that must come from cutting something else in the operation and faculties of these completive experiments. So smaller classes, not always the standard, becomes a draw for parents.

It also helps that the parents are "coerced" into "contributing" hours of their labor and efforts into supplementing and off-loading the expenses of the charter's operations.  No compliance with mandatory service, no "free" taxpayer-funded charter schooling for your child.

4.) Cato: Thus far, the governor and state Legislature seem unaware of the vast savings to be had from universal charter schooling. But they have shown their willingness to promote charters in response to a far smaller financial inducement.

RESPONSE: The use of the charter movement based on the segregation academies of the south has been a pet project of a cornucopia of private and parochial interests. The heavy push from the Catholic hierarchy to achieve the voucher has been a major ingredient in this movement, privatizing for profit as Jonathan Kozol pointed out in Harpers Magazine is the "giant enchilada" for venture capitalists-so eager to break into the public schools lockbox.

The mantra, education is the sole responsibility of parents, has in it the thought that if you have a child the expense of educating that child is totally on you. That concept is specious, but it motivates a strong undercurrent in the anti-public school ranks. Right thinking citizens see a much larger and more important reason for excellence in public schools, for all children: the survival of our democracy.

One of the significant sources of the perennial "stink tank attacks" on public schools stems from the fact that all our children, from all our ethnic and racial groups, didn't sit in the same classrooms until into the 1970's. The residual fear and resentment over that occurrence has spawned a plethora of academies and private elitist religious school.

Just go the local library and look under the Yellow Pages for the listings of such schools in a city like Charlotte, North Carolina, there peruse the scores of such educational operations listings, the list will astound you.

5.) Cato: If legislators are willing to promote charter schools modestly in response to that modest and transitory incentive, they should be willing to promote charter schools much more intensively for a recurring annual savings that is eight times larger.

RESPONSE: The cost savings in a charter operation would be different if the playing field were level and identical with the local, neighborhood school. We have seen over 40 charters bite the dust this year alone. More will follow. Who gets the buildings, the computers, the equipment? The taxpaying public? Call your representative and ask. The answers will be weak and unrewarding. And then you have to ask yourself why is the Bay Mills Tribe in the tax-funded charter school business? Wouldn't it be more profitable and sensible for them to operate more casinos?

6.) Cato: (S)ignificant though it would be, charterizing the state's education system is not the best that Michiganians could do for their children. Opening the state's educational marketplace completely would be a better option. Some parents, for instance, prefer a religious education for their children, and religious (particularly Catholic) schools have repeatedly been found to be among the most effective and least expensive to operate.

RESPONSE: If a religious institution, say the branch run by Louis Farakahan, wants to run a "private" religious institution; what's the harm in throwing some of the "surplus" Michigan tax monies to them for that purpose?   If private sources like the Amway clan, WalMart, the Knights of Columbus, or the Michigan Militia want a "government free" academy let them fund it and operate it as they see fit. To ask the taxpayer to fund indoctrination and sectarian religious training is one bridge too far. Already we have seen a charter run as a Muslim school teaching Arabic and having over a 90 percent Muslim student population.

Let's see now, what other kinds of secular or religious groups should we endow with public tax dollars to educate to their own beliefs and standards?

Incidentally, Catholic schools are not schools-on average-that have just Catholic students or individuals with religious orders as instructors anymore. They are very diverse and eclectic.

During the 1960's Catholic schools slipped in their achievement and desirability, being a Catholic school has not always automatically proven to be a school of excellence, and how they are run; not democratic either. Problems with sexual abuse and physical abuse of students in Catholic schools is a topic worth exploring, but in another venue.

7.) Cato:(P)roviding free charter schools without providing easier access to private school options reduces families' access to both religious and secular private alternatives. The closure of many Michigan private schools during the past decade resoundingly attests to the fact that it's hard to compete with free or heavily subsidized public schools.

RESPONSE: Not every elitist or religious desire for one's children should be the responsibility of the public and the tax dollar. No group should be more certain of this than the Libertarians and their Cato Institute. Did Andrew J. Coulson simply skip-rock this essay across the water or did he get approval from the Cato high council?

8.) Cato: Michigan's Constitution bans giving all families an easy choice between district, charter and private schools. As a result, it is impossible for Michigan parents to give their children the best possible educational options and permanently rein in out-of-control school district spending.

RESPONSE: It all comes down to Cato and fellow travelers finding a way to breach the levees of separation of church and state. On one hand they want freedom, and lots of it. Libertarians want freedom for drug use.

They want to get out of taxes they don't like. Then they want a "government" endowment for religious and private education. How can these ardent proponents of "freedom" be so bifurcated and blind? Perhaps they need to check with Michigan Republicans in the legislature to see how they carry on in their dark night of anti-public school radicalism.

Original Post.

An Additional Dollar a Day...

Response to Nolan Finley in "House Dems won't face budget reality" Detroit News Blog on November 11, 2009.

Nolan:

What is the difference between your opinion and that of the standard Mackinac Center fare?

What would Michigan be like if the center had gotten 80% of all the things they lust after? (Most often, with your blessing, one might note.)

The MacCen sees this present economic hardship time as a precious opportunity to finish work they've been whittling at for decades. This "crisis" for them is a super "opportunity."

Just what would education quality and taxpayer responsibility for education be if MacCen got its every wish?

Those cardinal controling influences in the MacCen, who cheer for an end to MESSA (and its excellent Blue Cross health care packages for school employees),ask just what would other (Mackinac Center friendly) insurance companies provide?

Think inadequate. How long would it be before they used their influence and cunning to reduce the service provided to something, not equal to the private sector, what ever that means, but less than the best of private sector benefits. That new health plan sought by the MacCen wouldn't be more competitive or less expensive without reductions in services and coverages. And who, Nolan, has decent private sector health care and benefits, as of this Michigan moment? Don't look to the GM workers for a baseline, don't turn to the ubiquitous Wall-Mart for a adequate health care model.

The core of the Michigan GOP is held hostage to the tax-haters and groups like the brown-bagged-headed-unknowns, secret bundlers of cash used to bring national influence to bear on a rural district like that once held by former Rep. Joe Schwarz.

When the intrepid clod buster Jack Welborn wanted to stigmatize the "high spending" legislature he brought over to the capitol a giant cow with an enormous utter, then Welborn prattled on about his opponents sucking up for tax monies.

Then it was Leon Dorlet and his begged and borrowed pink hog, which lingered on Capitol square, hoping to chide and hector the legislature into refusing to raise revenue and taxes. Dorlet was just carrying swill for a well-known national organizer against taxes.

Then came the Beltway weasel, Grover Norquist, who smoozed on Mackinac Island with Sen. Nancy Cassis. "No new taxes, no new taxes." This year's entire proceedings in the Mackinac Island leadership sessions were sponsored, run by the no-taxes lobbies and the endless varieties of flat, fair, or no tax fanatics (including John Fund) who believe themselves the keepers of the holy grail. Starve the state's services into oblivion and all will be well.

A large number of the GOP legislature has given up their rights to outsiders, carpet baggers from DC, when they swear and take an oath never to raise new taxes. Thank God for term limits.

The hard-hearted, conjoined twins of no-tax legislation in the state senate are Mike Bishop and Alan Cropsey. What an odd couple, if ever. Both are ambitious and both have a shed full of axes they love to grind. Bishop loves embarrassing Gov. Granholm and Cropsey won't ever miss a swipe at the Michigan Education Association, ever since he threw in with the fearful home schoolers hoping to scotch maternity, creeping secularism, and of course, the teaching about evolution by holing up in the kitchen with course books designed to propagate the fanatic ideology and race relations teachings of Bob Jones University, Cropsey's alma mater.

So then, who's reality must a citizen chose between: . Democrats who are weakly trying to save the future for our kids against the entrenched GOP Senate, or the ranting GOP which sees no end of pleasure in tearing down Michigan and its children in their hour of need. They are holding out for the equivalent of a cup of less-than-Starbucks coffee a day.


You'd get the idea from Bishop and his clique that it would bankrupt our struggling personal budgets to give just an additional dollar a day (in miscellaneous taxes and closed loopholes) to save our public schools in this their hour of need.


Original Post.