2/17 (February 17, 2011) will live on in Michigan History as a very dark day: The Day Gov. Snyder Robbed Kids & Grandparents

"Pensions are deferred payments for work done. 'Benefits' are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them." - George Lakoff

Simply put, Snyder has chosen to join on the Welcher Wagon. The numb nerd has bought into the "airy fairy" world of Karl Rove and William Kristol. Snyder has become the manservant of that nasty little corporate gofer , Grover Norquist and his anarchist John Bircher buddy, Saulis Anuzis.

The Back Story
Years ago, a nominal moderate (at the time), former House Speaker, now corporate officer at DTE, Paul Hillegonds, said that the local communities had been "too generous to teachers." He said that the state take-over of local schools was the way to force (that's "coerce" - a term of endearment our Tea-Publicans adore) by the "shift and shaft" mechanism that become Proposal A. That pushed costs back on the local taxpayers so that they, in Hillegonds' scheme, would have to make "hard choices."

Prop A was a clever device that gave the taxpayer a sugar coated, measured dose of arsenic, accumulative poison. The candy coating was the immediate "tax relief" in the form of a 60% annual reduction in local property taxes for "homesteaders" and hoped owners ignored the "hit" that was backloaded in the form of "state transfer taxes" at the point of sale. Prop A saw several categories of state responsibilities such as retirement costs (state obligations) drilled back to the local schools as part of the required responsibilities due under the so-called "foundation grant." That provision included what has amounted to hundreds of millions of indirect support to private and church schools.

Sen. Jack Welborn was less sophisticated in his truth and revelations, he knew exactly what was happening in 1993 and spoke up revealing how "foundation grants" were designed to undercut public schools.

The sharp decline of the Michigan economy is now a decade along. The "gifts" and "ear candy" bandied about by John Mathias Engler and cronies (many of whom are back at the state salary trough under Snyder) were illusions. The slippage following Prop A created huge loopholes for corporations who weaseled out huge tax "give-backs" from local units of government. Tens of millions of tobacco taxes were lost to cross-state-boundary smuggling, which became an industry until the tardy tax stamp was affixed.

Did Engler save the Big Three? Did Engler's Revolution insulate Michigan from recession or produce a business boom in Michigan? Decidedly NO. The structural games and devices he and cohorts peddled began to ravish the state even before he left town for a millionaire Bonus for Bonzo as chief lobbyist at NAM, aggressively promoting China over Michigan. How weird is that!

The debt Engler left Jennifer, and the many, many holes "King John" drilled in the revenue bucket did just what he designed them to do, they revenue starved Michigan. That huge "unfunded" business connected to "state obligations" to pay deferred constitutional income to superannuated public employees: That's a nasty Engler legacy.

On 2/17 we said, "Shut up we don't want to hear about history," "we want what we want" taken back from our deserving retirees. And "Oh Yes," we have the majority power to do it, "so there."

2/17 will live on in Michigan History as a very dark day; the day Snyder walked the state away from its moral obligations in order to award his business cronies and boost Karl Rove's efforts to defund unions.

This last week we have seen the final chapter of the Engler Revolution make a direct hit on our children and our seniors. Granddad and grandma are hit with the leeching effects of a decades long campaign from Engler's Willy Wonks over at the Mackinac Center. They are so proud, so happy! Just drop by their new showy headquarters near the Lansing capitol and pay them a visit, ignore the party trash in the back conference room! MacCen benefactors: Dow, Amway, Consumers, the Insurance lobby as well as a whole host of outside anti-government foundations have been paid-off big time with the proposed Snyder/Engler Redux Michigan Budget proposals.

Whoa, just a jiffy!

Snyder is imposing dramatic "new taxes." Does anyone believe all those "NO NEW TAXES" Tea Party legislators can stay true to their solemn oaths and support HUGE NEW TAXES ?

Snyder's Voo Doo vocabulary usage, neutralizing the REAL facts, notwithstanding!

Just you wait, Just you wait. The people are coming to Lansing.


Original Post.

A Political Marrigage from Hell: The Blonde and the Political Godfather

Response and commentary on series of articles on Michigan's being declined for "Ract to the Top" funding in the Oakland Press in "Fingers point over failure of Race to the Top application" which included comments from Republican Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and the MEA and and AP Story "Gov, Granholm ‘disappointed’ at Michigan being shut out in 'Race to the Top' education funds" on March 5, 2010.

A failed Governor and a gnarly power-grabber make one last attempt to achieve their legacy moment-Pin Blame on the State's Teachers.

Nothing short of desperation and the full realization that circumstances created by G.W. Bush's Great Job Killing Recession has forced the shotgun marriage of a marginalized governor (seeking a promising position in politics outside Michigan) and an old grumpy frump of a "public payroller," man with delusions of power and control over his fiefdom of Oakland County (replete with Brook's long history of "shot calling" as the GOP Godfather of Eastern Michigan) would have the power to produce this god-awful blames laying tag team: Brooks and Jenny.

Previously, here's how it was. " L. Brooks Patterson just wants to know: Is Gov. Jennifer Granholm trying to upstage him -- again?

"The 71-year-old Oakland County executive issued a press release Tuesday pointing out that, for the second year in a row, Granholm has scheduled her State of the State address on the same night of his State of the County speech." That highly annoyed Brooks. So what brings about this highly irregular, ugly marriage of pols?

THE GODFATHER’S SLAPDOWN: DEFEAT THE MICHIGAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION'S RIGHT TO DEFEND TRADITIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION
The teachers of Michigan, more exactly the Michigan Education Association, have so far succeeded in getting across the point to current "the powers that be" in Michigan and to the state legislature and also to the now-powerless, lame duck governor, that individuals, parents, local business people, and children are right to defend and protect the traditional public school in their community.

This is a desperate hour. The over-all long term decline of Michigan, first seen as a slight trickle in the earthen dam (Michigan's economic health) which held back the outsourcing and Chinese completion-a flood building behind it-expanded under John Engler indicated big trouble ahead. Engler ignored the distinct warning signs of that small fissure and now the dam is about to breech sweeping away what is left of Michigan's struggling economies.

THE BIG FIGHT: THE LOCAL ECONOMY VERSUS THE SELFISH INTRANSIGENCE OF BOTH  BISHOP AND DILLON
Agriculture now takes a high place as Michigan's economic engine. Tourism is far more than a pastime part of the state's income. The local economic engine in every community across this great state is the public school. Forget the wingnuttery of the past, ignore the meanness of the Engler Revolution and the selfish intransigence of the politically hopeful "pretty boys" Bishop and Dillon. We consistently gain from our investment and returns drawn from traditional public schools' operations and purpose. It's blind economic ignorance to claim otherwise.

Never forget: Traditional education moves the local economy and consumes local supplies, education provides stable and dependable jobs and generates local dollars of great importance to our state's survival,  while at the same time public school delivers the highest hopes we have for our children into a better tomorrow.   It's our present local economic engine and our entire future promise for children. MEA and parents, local businesses, and informed citizenry support this fact. Back in September 2009 the Associated Press survey of the state showed that Michigan supported INCREASED TAXES FOR EDUCATION BY A 2 TO 1 MARGIN.

The deceptive politics and the chicanery connected to Proposition A of 1994 took a big part of the local authority that is needed to sanely run those local neighborhood schools and shipped it on a ladle to a huckster-bound Lansing. In Lansing school operations funding became a shuttle cock for the peacocks of the legislature and a "goodie bag" for the lobby corps.

ENGLER MADE ANTI-PUBLIC SCHOOLS HARANGUES FASHIONABLE : ENGLERISM STUCK.
Under Engler, local control was sold off. Like that biblical birthright local control was traded for a cold bowl of insider pap. This fact and the spirit it spawned is attested to by long-time observer, Tim Skubick: "Beating up on the MEA is a popular in-door sport in this town (Lansing). It was former Gov. John Engler who made it fashionable and others have picked up where he left off." One of those carrying on is Patterson: (Patterson said last Friday. "Of course it (RTTT funding) went under because the MEA opposed it, and one of the things they look for in Washington is collaboration, and we didn't have it here in Michigan... I'm holding the MEA strictly responsible for the loss of that money.") Patterson is senile or well off-his game. "Collaboration?" When did Patterson call for across-the-aisle cooperation during the last round of state budget quarrels? Brook's sentiment and attitude as historically been in line with that of former GOP/U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, who once characterized bipartisanship as a form of "date rape."

Please note, as a commentator on this topic has reported elsewhere: "Those (possible RTTT) funds weren't going to cover the long term costs of the program. The state would have simply spent all the money it got, and then be left funding yet another program.

"Brooks Patterson has addressed this many times, and that's why Oakland County won't fund programs once federal money runs dry. It's hit and run federal spending. They entice states to start programs by giving a large sum of money to get it started.

"Once that money is spent, where does the funding to keep these programs come from? This idea of spending money in order to receive partial funding from D.C. is a joke. It isn't just education either. The light rail system wreaks (sic) of this sort of thing. Wait until fed money runs out on that project."

COMMUNITIES WERE ROBBED OF THEIR RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION
Communities, which would like to have the right to straight-line vote up or down on local operating millage to support and operate the traditional, historical schools in their jurisdiction, as they had for generations, possessed the privilege to decide, by voting, the future of their own schools. Now they stand like mendicants/ beggars, relegated to await the crumbs passed on to them by the panic-laced poppycockery of  Lansing's stupid "political dog and pony show"-late night sessions and shutdowns of the state government- (fueled by a ill-begotten restraint on democracy-term limits-which has stupefied and undermined our state's entire political system).

THE EDUCATION COMMUNITY'S SUCCESS IN RAISING SUPPORT IN DEFENSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION HAS ANGERED THIS ODD COUPLE: BROOKS & JENNY
All this brings us to this moment. The MEA and other education groups have successfully kept the role and importance of traditional education before the people. This obviously has infuriated both Granholm and Brooks Patterson. In reprisal they are willing to come together in an arrangement that defies logic and all recent political standard practice-support of a new Democratic education program. Brooks would never normally commit support, much less advocate and champion, any Democratic device such as the so-called "Race-to-the-Top." RTTT is sponsored and created by Obama's Chicagoman, Erne Duncan. No right-minded Democratic governor would team up with the fire-breathing, super-partisan Patterson, knowing his cunning and ferocity in such MEA sentiments. Brooks is hopelessly addicted to spinning off political shenanigans and puffery-as he has for so long.

SO WHAT GIVES?

Both Brooks and Jenny are desperately needy. Thus all former partisan limitations or regard for former appearances or for either party's devices are canceled. If they can successfully project to the public that not they or theirs have created this funding crisis or hold any responsibility for it, they will succeed in protecting their own self-centered/fleeting ambitions, and those of that failed Lansing ring of duds.

THE "RACE TO THE TOP" IS A FRAUD & A MAJOR FEDERAL POWER GRAB
These two very different, very desperate individuals have married themselves into a relationship to attack one of the most important elements of local economy and an essential function in order to save some part of their own selfish interests. Jenny and Brooks are doing so in light of one of the greatest swindle/schemes of recent political history, the "Race-to-the-Top" lottery device. This Obama sponsored government program has coerced Michigan and other states into making major concessions and surrendering considerable state and local authority/powers of control to the federal government. What a queer arrangement!

There is no certainty in the "vague promise" of any real or "bail-out" cash. All these federally imposed demands (to which a harried Michigan legislature capitulated, which this highly panicked state legislature has rolled over for) are nothing other than a revenue "long shot" -indefinite, dangerous, and administratively garbled paperwork and red tape. As one common sense commenter has said, "Call it sabotage if you want, but I call it safe. It only makes sense to sign on to something if you know what it's going to be."

RTTT is an expensive gamble, hoping against hope. IT'S A PIDDLEY "FEDERAL BRIBE," ladled out arbitrarily as a "possible" source of funds in this time of the state's cash shortfall.

The budget imbroglio is a situation that was created and is already compounded and aggravated by Brooks Patterson's gang of fellow boneheads determined to prevent any new revenue sources.

Brooks will continue to "service starve" the state's richest county into compliance with his narrow idea of economic sanity, while having funded million dollar helicopters and doodads for his buddy Sheriff Bouchard.

So Brooks and Jenny: Do your voodoo dance over MEA's resistance to your political wills and watch your chances for self-aggrandizement and political prospects disappear.


Original Articles in the Oakland Press and AP.