Tea Party Pot Bellies: Michigan's Tea Partiers - What's in their Kettle?

Whistling from their ears, full of steam piped in from the boilers of Koch Petroleum, these angry men and women are pawns of the first order.

Dunces with dulled intellects and greedy with selfish desire to hold on to what little their corporate masters, have deigned to allow them to retain of all their years of work, labor, and endless toil, "Steamed" Tea Party Pot Bellies are in a manipulator's manufactured rage. It's actually one of the saddest stories to be told; it spells out how the public can be conned, hornswoggled, beguiled, into working exactly against what has always been in their best interests, futures, and well-being.

Centers of Civil Discourse Drown Out: American conversation on local concerns in the
corner of the hardware or general store replaced by Big Media and AFP Money
(General Store in Haysi, VA National Archives 1938)

The Michigan TeaPublican (Tea Party Republican) Super Majority back inside the Capitol, all comfy in their leather swivel chairs, faces lit by taxpayer provided laptops, saw an opening to their advantage. True to form,
GOPer's took the easy path: stick to the Corporatist scripts and rad right discipline: Put the burden of revenue off on children, the elderly, the pensioner, the poor, the public servant. By all means protect the business and corporate community!

If only these Republicans strove to serve the real needs of the public as much as they pride themselves in being errand boys/"buds" to business!

What a nunce Snyder is! Says he was "hired" by Michigan to be their "CEO"! Find that in your state constitutions, you uber-strict constitutionalists. It's not there.

Michigan Americans for Prosperity Propaganda Troupes for Senior Citizen as Shock Troops:
Michigan TP'ers at AFP / Mackinac Sponsored Rally in Lansing, MI April 14, 2011 (DailyKos)

Taking a reach-back look at the Lansing Capitol Rally of the Michigan Chapter of Americans for Prosperity (led by Scott Hagerstrom) last spring, one sees photos of row after row of ball capped, balding older white males, supported by carefully placed courtesy folding chairs. They are angry and frustrated waving provocative signs to prove it's just right to be ginned up for projecting anger and blame on someone else and advantage the Rovian Backroom Boys. Steampotters are ripe for backing the blacklash, then when their handlers have taken all the advantage they can, Tea Party Pot Bellies will be toast!

Staring at the ongoing effects of the worst economic catastrophe of our time, the ruinous, failed Bush regime and its unbearable and destructive rampage of eight years (misdirected wars, unprecedented debt, and unequal taxation) was bad enough; not seeing a clear way out, still forced to confront the seemingly intractable flaws and effects of G.W. Bush cataclysm, has left the worried public to sip the bitter dregs resulting from his bad judgment.

Steampotters are forced to stare at a resultant, potential economic and political collapse worldwide. That's too much for a potbellied TeaPartisan under duress and stress. They're ready for a brawl. But with whom? Their neighbors, their grandchildren, the first responders? The cause of their troubles which has them in a kink? They are supporting the very Corporatist interests that have been eroding their nest eggs and killing their democracy. How odd!

Steampotters are damn mad at the demise of their retirement assets stolen by Wall Street and speculators, the trouble their children are enduring, and the loss of their home equity value-stripped as it was in the Bush Bust of 2008. THEY NEED SOMEONE TO BLAME. They are ready to led by the Kochs MEGA-cash-campaigning. As chance would have it, Koch Brothers had shipped in that unsavory character, Dick Morris - and didn't fetish Dick strut his stuff?

Steaming potbellies are addicted to Right's Noise Machine and Rupert Murdock's pap-and-slap
Actually more than 70% of Republicans with cable access watch FOX News exclusively. Nothing satisfies an angry depressed curmudgeon more than more anger and depression. Bad news fuels fear, resentment and aggression.

As dailies, such as the Detroit News and the Grand Rapids Press, slide down the waste pipes, FOX News enriches itself and its Machiavellian owner. An alien with "bought" power and influence. It's a place of influence and profit FOX and Rupert do not deserve.

This is possible because of these same gullible discontents-the more they are depressed the more they want someone else to ante up and bear their far share of load. Many citizens from out the past paid for the infrastructure that was the life-long support of these Tea Party Pot Bellies-now whiners and malcontents.

The whole attitude is: I've got my "little bit" and I'm scared witless it will be lost to someone else. Their mantra: Me, my son John, his wife and my wife, us four and NO MORE. This kind of self-centered selfishness leaves behind both Christianity and neighborhood democracy.

Given permission to lash out and accost others, goaded on by Svengalis re-pleat with talking point books designed to manipulate and exploit exaggerated blame; as long as it distracts the November voters from the Bush Depression (still in bubble wrap) the danger plays right into the hands of the negativists who inhabit both the Detroit News and the dank dens of the deceitful enemies of public life and service.

Warming the Factories of Manufacturing and the Middleclass: Garland Stove Company's
World's Largest Stove, Postcard Detroit MI 1893 (Michigan Historical Archives)

Amway's Richard M. DeVos Sr. and the Brothers Koch are thought to be Depression proof. However, if they can manipulate the TeaPartisans to do the heavy lifting to lobby to remove regulations, and overturn customer protections, and collective bargaining rights, etc. to greatly benefit them and the other greedy Corporatists - this would be perfect timing.

And to assuage the pent-up anger and the angst tearing at the gut of Tea Potbelliers, what do the current Rad Republicans offer?

Actually Harry Truman laid out the genuine GOP "offers" best:

• Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke.
• They stand four-square for the American home - but not for housing.
• They are strong for labor - but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
• They favor minimum wage - the smaller the minimum wage the better.
• They endorse educational opportunity for all - but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
• They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine - for people who can afford them.
• They consider electrical power a great blessing - but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
• They think American standard of living is a fine thing - so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
• And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Harry T. enjoyed the blunt truth of strongly brewed black coffee in a big cup, not a steamy tea made with the deadly Kool-Aid of the Koch Bros. subversions, et. al. served up in a Koch Industries-made throwaway paper cup.

On the Reader:
History on the Garland Company Giant Stove and what happened to this Michigan landmark.
Gazette posts on the Americans For Prosperity run Tea Party Rally April 14, 2011 pictured above in "Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI" and "Americans for Prosperity’s Cotton Head Grump Out, High on Motrin 800, Fizzles.

Related Posts:
In Detroit: Resentment, Malice & Roaring Opportunism Ride a Wave of Harsh Tea Party Ideology (April 2012) - Revisit Occupy Detroit: the Tea Party is Different – Hank Payne’s Myopic View (November 2011) - The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common (October 2011) - It Was No Frenzy Island: Neanderthals & the Nerd (Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island) (September 2011) - Teaparty leader: The More We Pay Attention - The More Hopeless it Can Seem, Political Parties Only Exist to Get and Keep Power (February 2011) - Saint Ayn - Extolling Great Evil - Used As Source of Tea Party Political Punch Lines

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When Radical Tax Hatred & Vengeance Go Too Far: May 18, 1927 – Sweet Innocents & Loving Teachers Gone Forever - Michigan’s Bath School Massacre

85 years ago today, a maniacal tax-hater bent on vengeance nearly wiped out his entire Michigan community killing scores of children, teachers, and others, including the Bath School's superintendent. Only a part of his explosives ignited. This event remains the single most tragic loss of children's lives due to a school massacre in American history.

This sober and unforgettable heinous event should serve as a strong and present warning: There is a limit to what our society can allow when it comes to direct action and the purposeful stoking up of anger and resentment against taxes and public institutions.

Bath School Disaster Makes National Headlines (Baltimore News May 19, 1927)

Yes, Bath Consolidated School was a 'government school.' Bath School was a public school; operated and run by the local governing school board and supported by the means of democratic voting-majority rule. Bath Consolidated 1927 was a proud community school.

One man, having been elected to the Bath school board, designed to work against it; plotted and executed a diabolical, murderous plan to punish his own community for offending his personal ideology and hatred of taxes levied for progressive educational reform-consolidation of the area's rural one room schools into a new and modern building.

Across the Country People Sense the Ongoing Warning Revealed in the Bath School Disaster

"I realized that today (May 18, 2011) is the anniversary of a terrorist act in Michigan 84 years ago. Ironic and fitting that it happened in Michigan, the home state of Betsy DeVos (sister of Erik Prince and wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos), the rabid crusader for dismantling public education."

This was the troubling revelation and remonstration of U.S. Rep. Emma Berry, from Texas, on this date a year ago.

Today, 85 years after this horrific event, the single greatest domestic terror attack on innocent children in the history of America, we are rightfully reminded that there are radical forces still seeking to destroy, bring down our proud historic institution, the public school.

It may not be one stupendous blast of dynamite under the school house, it is a sustained and sinister series of local and state battles across the country pitched and fought by people with rage and anger at the public school and the teachers who mentor our children.

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The rise of the national TeaPartiasns (Republican Tea Party members) across America has given "legs" to the multi-millions of the Walton Family and the Amway Clan which have lit the fuse of mistrust and angst in the minds of the malleable public. Hating taxes, resenting the conditions of urban schools (abandoned by whites and cut off by business and corporations) as well as religious bias against the curriculum that includes a wide spectrum of free expression and critical thinking (dubbed by Fundamentalists and Christian Dominionists as a new religion: 'Secular Humanism') these mega-wealthy radicals (who have done so much to destroy the heart and soul of American communities with their plunder of dreams and usurpation of local merchants places on Main Street), now dane to take away that which is left, the neighborhood school.

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The vouchers and the charter school movements were born out of rabid reaction to the Civil Rights Movements of the 1960's and the forced federal integration of public schools. The segregation academy was the response to these revolutionary attacks on the "separate and equal" racial doctrines and the charade of Jim Crow Laws devised to enforce racial injustices, a quasi-pogrom that had ruled in America for far too long. In Michigan during the early 1920's there was a rapid rise in the activity and membership of the KKK. Churches and ministers, leading business men and citizens joined up as was discovered in Newaygo's cache of KKK member records and hidden memorabilia. This movement included religious individuals, mainly Protestant Fundamentalists, who like their counter parts in the Southern Baptist Convention, were rank racial and religious bigots with hatred for the "others" they despised in their society.

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The 1920's may have been "roaring" for bankers, speculators, and others on Wall Street and in large urban areas, but life on the farms and in the countryside at large was steadily declining, revealing the tell-tale signs of a economic and social rift. The gap between the wealth and income of the ordinary folk, many of them still on small family farms, was corrosively and aggressively taking hold and would result in, what we know now to be a widespread, deep national depression which lingered into the Second World War.

There are chilling parallels with the 1920's and today. The KKK is passé and in its place is the conspiracy of corporate backroom operators, the Koch Bros. et al, and The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), whose collaboration with FOX Cable News has ginned up a pseudo indigenous/astroturf amalgamation of hate and angst known loosely as the Tea Party movement. Their mantra: No new taxes, no collaboration, no helpful compromise, no bi-partisanship, no hand of fellowship: It's the enforcement wing of the Party of 'NO'.

This rise of a multiplicity of groups-skillfully manipulated and utilized to terrorize the Republican office holders of the nation-via the Karl Rovian tactic of TeaPartisan 'Primarying' of Moderates and Independents in the GOP-has given rise to a 'mob' of malcontents and anti-tax activists who feed on fear, anger, and personal greed. Their targets, much like that of the KKK, are immigrants, minorities, and other elements they envision as gnawing away at their own wealth, assets, and future security.

The Kehoe Malignancy
Andrew P. Kehoe, who was the mad bomber of Bath School May 18, 1927, would fit right in (during the lead up to his murderous act) with the TeaPartisan sentiment and share their anger and desire to radically alter the course of public education. He crossed the indelible line. Kehoe went far to the darkside. There is no way to excuse or diminish his aberrant act of blind rage and unhinged revenge against his own community-its children and teachers, none. There is here on this sad anniversary, however, sufficient and strong warning that the desire to perseverate and concentrate angst on government coercion and police powers to tax its citizens still inflames minds-some of which are unreasonable and unstable.

Squaring Off Against Political Vengeance & Reprisal That Goes Too Far
The current frame of mind in the Republican dominated Michigan Legislature includes a bull-headed determination to take down public schools and replace them with a zoological jungle of loosely-run charter schools, vouchers for religious/sectarian operations, on-line teaching schemes (virtual schools) and full-frontal attacks on the mentors who teach our children in the neighborhood school owned by everyone.

A miasma of delusion and reprisal is currently sweeping the Nation, and Michigan, replete with program cutting and give-aways, for-profit enterprises designed to undercut and replace the public schools. This is coup can only be classed as an updated campaign by some to resurrect the destruction and divisiveness of the KKK, benefit from the power of reprisal and greed, and offer private operators entree into billions of taxpayer dollars specifically set aside for publicly operated education and community acculturation.

Bath School Memorial Plaque Listing Victims (Bath, MI)

Never Again
It was out of such motives that anger and ideology drove Andrew P. Kehoe May 18, 1927 into an act arising out of public school hating, tax-resenting, a single man's act which is unparalleled for its murderous zeal to kill children. Kehoe is a tragic and powerful reminder of unilateral direct action and a ghastly and deviant design laid to takedown a community-centered on obliterating its children.

Communities are rapidly losing their control and oversight of their neighborhood schools. Just as WalMart, with its cheap Chinese goods and poverty wages, has brought down town after town, now the Waltons, Michelle Rhee, Jeb Bush, and others led by Amway and Betsy Prince DeVos (American Federation for Children or AFC) are determined to rifle the assets and plunder the funding sources of your public school for personal profit and their extreme ideological purposes.

If these Anti-Public School forces succeed, we will not have learned the harsh lesson of the Bath School Disaster: The public school will always remain the enduring heart and soul of any community. Public schooling is essential to sustaining American democracy.

A Powerful Afterthought:

Pres. Bill Clinton's Remonstration and Plea Against Domestic Terror, Dark Forces That Give Rise to Evil

"To all my fellow Americans beyond this hall, I say, one thing we owe those who have sacrificed is the duty to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our freedom, our way of life.

Let us teach our children that the God of comfort is also the God of righteousness. Those who trouble their own house will inherit the wind. Justice will prevail.

Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it.

In the face of death, let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, 'Let us not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.'"

Source: Speech Transcript of President Clinton in Oklahoma City, OK on April 23, 1995.

On the Reader:
Documentary "Bath School Disaster" by Lansing Community College (March 2012).

Contemporary, firsthand account and history of the Bath School District events by local resident M. J. Ellsworth (1927 5th Edition 1991), description of events on Wiki and a Rootsweb extensive list of historical sources and articles.

More recent coverage in "Survivors Recall 1927 Michigan School Massacre" a NPR story on April 17, 2009 and "Local residents recently discuss the future of the Bath School Memorial Park" and historical site - Story and video (May 14, 2012)

Related Slates:
More on Public Education and Michigan Public Schools on the Gazette.

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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.

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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.

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Tricky Rick & His 'Nerd Herd' Play Dangerous Economic Game in Michigan

"Re-invented" Michigan is headed in a disastrous economic direction: Feed the Corporations & Business Buddies v. Starve the Poor, the Elderly, and Shank Our Children.

How Truly Nuts Is This?

Snyder's slick 2 billion dollar tax increase/shift means: Less sales taxes, less commercial, fewer new customers and other diminishing business activity and expansion of small businesses. These are the direct results of headstrong, stone-hearted Tea-Publicans in Michigan's Super Majority Legislature having pushed through 2011 massive tax hikes on the poor, having stolen promise and limited savings from retirees, and having upped the daily survival expenses of vital public sector workers.

READER: "Titanic shift in Lansing" by Judy Putnam on February 25, 2011 at the Michigan League for Human Services


Herd of Robber Barons during turn of the century Age of Greed

All of this Snyder CEO inspired "harvesting" of nearly $2 billion in new taxes was raised to blatantly treat the Nerd's business buddies with a massive and excessive business bail-out/gift. Tax hikes of this magnitude will impact directly consumer demand and sales across the state. Less sales taxes, less commercial, fewer new customers and other diminishing business activity, as well as fewer small business successes will be the result.

Exactly how much of a cut-in-demand will result from Snyder's massive new taxes remains to be seen. But unavoidable reductions will gut the joy of the Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (now luxuriating in its power to strip monies away from the poor, the retired on limited incomes and pensions, children, and public servants) is headed for a rude awaking.


Snyder and a few of the political gaggle following the Nerd Herd, Signing Business Tax Cuts June 2011 (Official Photo)

The new Michigan Income Tax hit on investment income will dull and diminish the draw Michigan has had with retirees who have husbanded a personal portfolio intended to care for themselves to the end of life. Given the very nature of the radical shift from reasonable taxes on business and industry (sectors that utilize the common spaces and infrastructure as a means to produce profit and trade) to those whose working days are over is especially off-putting and repulsive to elders who can easily move themselves and their "kitty" to a friendlier state. Start subtracting retirees from drug stores, restaurants, retail stores, and from doctors and hospital care, then see for yourself what a terrible blunder the Nerd herd has committed. Seniors with their carefully stashed savings are a huge, stable financial asset to any community.

Add to the Nerd's negative tax scenario the hard facts about jobs in Michigan reported by Susan Demas:

"While Michigan added 63,500 jobs in 2011, it could have been more. Why? Well, the private sector grew, as University of Michigan economists reported. There were 77,500 private-sector jobs added. But the overall number of jobs added was brought down by the decline in government sector jobs.

CALCULATION: 2011 Lost 14,000 or is it 17,000?

And that's one reason why Michigan's economic recovery hasn't been as robust as downturns past. 'It's been brought down because government jobs are declining,' economist George Fulton.

That trend is set to continue in the future. Private sector jobs are projected to rise by 35,300 in 2012, 35,500 in 2013 and 52,000 in 2014. But government job declines will offset growth in all three years, according to the U of M forecast, bringing the overall projected total for the state to 26,000 jobs in 2012, 28,500 jobs in 2013 and 46,800 jobs in 2014.

And Michigan's unemployment rate isn't projected to slip below 9 percent, on average, until 2014.

So while the right-wing economic argument -- that has practically become accepted as fact -- is that government doesn't create jobs, the reality is that it does. And cutting government has a real economic impact, and it's not always positive." (emphasis added)

This is the Michissippification of Michigan, plain and simple.

READER:
Poorest families hit 1,000 times harder than rich by Michigan tax changes (Rob South Feb 1, 2012) and Report: Tax Changes Hit Low-Income Families the Hardest (MLHS Feb 2012)

See Also: Michigan Republicans say Taxes are a Sin. But Taxing the Poor to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies Isn't?  -- Discover Michissippi’s (Michigan's) Corporate Bosses: The Elites Who Now Run Snyder & the GOP Super Majority Legislature  -- The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People

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One Thing Social Conservatives Dislike as a Candidate for President: A Sex Addict

If Newt Gingrich is to pass muster with the "values voters"- strong convictions evangelical Christians - he will have to pass the morals test. The job of president is far beyond the biblical role of a Christian elder. The character history of a "elder" requires that person to pass a biblical minimal standards task: "one in whom no fault is found."

This is the scripture verse lining out the moral qualifications for a early Christian deacon:

"An Elder ought to be one in whom no fault is found and is the husband of one woman, is of a vigilant mind, sober, orderly, loves strangers and is a teacher."
-- I Timothy 3:12

If there is one thing that most social conservative Americans dislike in a candidate for president it's a sex addict. 

Fred Barnes wrote recently in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in "The History of Newt: Are Republicans ready to look past his transgressions?":

"... Gingrich has 'told friends he's like Richard Nixon, not particularly likable and hated by the press and the left.' And here we see Gingrich taking a page from Nixon's playbook. If there was one thing Americans disliked more than the not particularly likable Nixon, it was dirty hippies."

Newt must believe that if one has a new haircut, a clean, odorless body, and a filthy mind, that because that person is not "dirty," cleaning up should qualify that individual for the office of a church "elder"? What about Newt with a stylish haircut, crisp suits, and a long history of sexual indulgence, if not addictions to fornication and adultery? Does just cleaning himself up with a confession to Focus on the Family's James Dobson and subsequently becoming a a Roman Catholic convert overcome and expunge his immoral past?

If there is one thing that most Americans dislike in a candidate for president: Being a sex addict. Newt's history is that of a serial adulterer. He has a long, early, history of easy sex and lax, if non-existent restrain on his libido.

Writer Paul Wilkes in "THE GOOD ENOUGH CATHOLIC" penned:

"Not that we Catholics are better or stronger, or more or less sexed, than other Christians or non-Christians; but there is simply a Catholic way of looking at things. We know the ideal; Catholicism has never been a religious faith that has called for anything less than the best in people. There IS such a thing as a Catholic ethic of sexual morality " and it makes sense, because it is based on the firm foundation of true love of self and true love of others, inspired by God's love for all. It is an ethic worth pursuing, a way of respecting sexuality that can last a lifetime, a legacy worth passing on to children who need a true and steady beacon by which to guide their lives."

Do you want to see into the twisted mind of Gingrich?
Read for yourself Gingrich's co-authored novel, with the title "1945". The book "1945" is a 1995 alternate history novel, which included descriptive lewd sexual material. Here's what occupied Gingrich's characters in his novel as per the September 1996 issue of Locus (issue 428, Vol. 37 No. 3):

"Baen (publishing) has been running full-page ads for 1945 by Newt Gringrich and William R. Forstchen, saying, 'You've heard the noise, now read the book.' Well, I've read the book, and I'm going to save you the trouble.

"The quotes you've seen in print and heard read over the air, the stuff about the pouting sex kitten and all, come from the first three pages. That may be because that's as far as anyone could get in the Forstchenian awfulness, but I am made of sterner stuff... So this is the last time I'll mention that "noise" Baen is so concerned about, other than saying that it's a pity the paragraph dealing with the pouting sex kitten was disemboweled between the bound galley review stage and the printed book stage. Her kneeling athwart her lover's shoulders would have added entertainment value that this book sorely needed.

"Our story starts with John Mayhew, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, wrapped in passionate embrace with his mistress who is, oh dear! a Nazi spy. He, poor fool, dazzled by her charms, reveals the US atomic bomb secrets to her.

"As befits the scene, the prose is some of the most turgid imaginable. Before we get to the bottom of page one we find such gems as an "initial gambit" (all gambits are openings -- it's what the word means). This should be a warning flag, telling us that we aren't quite in the presence of a master wordsmith.

"The pouting sex kitten's name is Erica, though we don't learn that until page 110, 109 pages after she's introduced. She's Erika by page 115 -- copy editing and proofreading weren't this book's high points, though I still have to give the copy editor points for making it through the book at all. The poor bugger needed a machete."

Remember, it was Newt that pushed the Clinton impeachment while having an adulterous affair with his now, but then future wife. Newt pushed forward with his attempts to "get" Clinton on morals grounds while pursuing his habitual sexual adventures at the same time.

What the nation paid for and what the youth of the world were exposed to was the printing of the papers (The Starr Report) which detailed the sexual activity of the president and his intern. The impact of the material on the here-to-fore sheltered Irish youths was said to be dynamic and debasing.

Restored to moral virginity by his Catholic conversion, Newt Gingrich need never be elevated to the role of an example -a "true and steady beacon by which to guide" the lives of youthful Americans. His tragic and twisted sexual history takes away Gingrich's right to national leadership, even if ultimately endorsed by James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, or Don Wildmod of the American Family Association or not. However, we all have seen what softies the Religious Right weakness is when it comes to stories of repentance and being "born again." They gave us that tragic and flawed cardboard Christian, George W. Bush, didn't they - just because he claimed to be "born again"? Bush was the man who said he answered to and took direction from a "higher father" - thus blaming God for his multiple failures as a president and commander-in-chief, and guardian of the national economy.

-----

Ultimately, it's important to focus on the Gingrichian MO: Toy with ideas, grand schemes, astonishing facts & figures, scenarios & proposals It's this skill set that most endears him to the rad right religious voters-whom he must woo in order to win the 2012 GOP nomination. These things endear Newt to his cultish followers and gin up their racialism.

Now Newt has accepted the role of uber-partisan "war dog"-a highly skilled predator/vicious attacker-who can "draw blood" and destroy. It's this ability of Gingrich to create, tear out, red meat and inflame ideological and racially-tinged carnage that voters, such as those Teapublicans in South Carolina, are raring to join forces with to defeat President Obama.

Gingrich is the most dangerous and amoral man in America, bar none! Newt must be denied the presidency.



Original.

See also previous pieces in this SERIES:

• Let the government be the government & Let the church be the church.
• "We Always Need a JESUS CANDIDATE"? - Just Who Will be God's People's Choice for President in 2012 
• Diehard Fundamentalist Evangelicals & Pentecostals have essentially a no-choice “choice” for GOP Candidate for President

How very peculiar - TeaPublicans hiding behind the shadow of FDR on collective bargaining for Public Employee Unions!

Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the rights of Federal Employees to collectively bargain versus the TeaPublican insidious lie; another case of the truth cleverly reshaped: "FDR opposed Public Employee Unions."

FDR definitively supported the advent of public employee unions, however FDR DID NOT SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO STRIKE FOR FEDERAL EMPOLYEES, which is a separate matter and distinction. To use FDR to support the usurpation of collective bargaining by Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is in bold error; a purposeful dissimulation of the actual facts.

FDR's Support for Public Employee Unions:

"Reading your letter (Mr. Steward, Federation of Federal Employees) of July 14, 1937, I (FDR) was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades 'has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships.' Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

"The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. ORGANIZATION ON THEIR PART TO PRESENT THEIR VIEWS ON SUCH MATTERS IS BOTH NATURAL AND LOGICAL, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government."

(Break)

"I (FDR) congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees (on) the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful."

(emphasis added)

Who were the National Federation of Federal Employees?

A union representing federal employees since 1917:

"NFFE was officially created at a labor convention in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 1917. It formed as an affiliate of the AFL and was at the time the federal employees union, representing several trades and industries. NFFE and other unions were able to form after 1912, when Congress passed the Lloyd-Lafollette Act to overturn Theodore Roosevelt's previous executive order. Roosevelt's mandate, frequently referred to as the 'gag rule' had previously prevented unionized activity."

Teddy Roosevelt "Gag Rule" Removed by Congress

To wit:

"Congress passed the Lloyd-La Follette Act (§6, 37 Stat. 555, 5 U.S.C. § 7511) on August 24, 1912, declaring that 'the right of persons employed in the civil service of the United States, either individually or collectively, to petition Congress or any member thereof or to furnish information to either House of Congress or to any committee thereof, shall not be denied or interfered with.'

"The Lloyd-La Follette Act provided a significant impetus to the formation federal employees' unions. In 1916, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union. The National Federation of Federal Employees was founded in Washington, D.C., on September 17, 1917. In 1918, it became the first labor union to win the legal right to represent federal workers."

Source: Wikipedia on National Federation of Federal Employees

Original.

Michigan Republicans say Taxes are a Sin. But Taxing the Poor to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies Isn't?

Taking My Money for Taxes is a “SIN”: TeaPartisans must be squirming over Snyder’s Billion Dollar “SIN”; Taxing Working Folk to Prop Up, Bail Out, Corporate Cronies

HOW CAN MICHISSIPPI'S TEAPUBLICANS NOT SQUIRM & SUFFER HEARTBURN WHEN THEY CONDONE THE SAME KIND OF POLITICALLY MOTIVATED TAXING "SIN" THAT THE THEY ACCOST & ACCUSE THE DEMOCRATS OF DOING-COERCING HIGHER TAXES-TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE TAXPAYER?

When government removes money from consumers it is a taxing act that reduces money in the private economy, resources that would otherwise have been used to produce valuable private-sector demands for goods or services. Boss Rick Snyder and The Business Leaders for Michigan are instead forcing UNPRECEDENTED/HUGE NEW TAXES on working people and the poor; these new revenues are them used to produce governmental outputs which in the case of Snyder's slick re-distribution of Michiganders personal funds-via coerced taxation on previously tax-sheltered (from state personal income taxes) hard earned pensions (delayed compensation) and (carefully garnered and saved for senior years) annuity income- adds crassly and brazenly to the bottomlines of those who contributed directly and generously to the Nerd's 2008 campaign for governor. It's payback time!

What kind of specious "shared sacrifice" for business is this?

The private-sector outputs projected by the Snyder geeks may never be produced because resources available to the consumers are instead being used to produce a massive, billion dollar plus business welfare handout. One pension dollar has the ability to turn around to the tune of $6.49 in the state's marketplace. To intercept that taxpayers' personal income...to direct it onto business bottom lines by an overly generous partisan "gift" of a much lower business tax for a few, and no taxes at all for many second tier businesses is unjust and corrupting. Meanwhile, the large stockholder corporations, especially manufacturing concerns e.g. Auto Production, will take a new tax hit. How does that create more good pay jobs? Snyder's faulty scheme has the ability to take a big, big bite out of Michigan's necessary commercial cycles.

These soon-to-be-forgone customer/demand dollars being taken from the worker, the retiree, the poor, the schools and our children, especially those supported on welfare, is a political folly; a costly blow to the very corporate and business lobbyists who tell the public this upward redistribution they rammed through the TeaPublican Super-Majority Legislature, is the answer to Michigan's recovery. It's a lie.

Taking taxpayers hard earned wages and savings to outright "gift" those precious, limited dollars to Snyder's overpaid CEO cronies-how is that just and right?

WHEN THE TEAPUBLICAN'S NERDONOMICS PRODUCES INCOME RE-DISTRIBUTION WHICH IS UPWARD... IT ISN'T CONSIDERED A RE-DISTRIBUTION? IT'S NOT LABELED "A TAKING"?

Sez Who?

DELUSION & GREED ARE THE MOST PALTRY OF PUBLIC POLICY MOTIVATORS!
WHAT KIND OF FUNNY HERB IS IN THE TEAPARTISAN'S CUP OF TEA?

LOCOWEED DELUSION & GREED MAKE FOR DISASTROUS PUBLIC POLICY


Original.

Nerd Snyder: Nada Jobs (Governor Rick Snyder: No New Jobs for Michigan)

Michissippians are increasing feeling mounting pressures in their personal financial stress and nervousness about their futures; not only their own futures, but those of their children and grandchildren. They are frustrated and angry with Rick Snyder, who promised to be a quick and thorough solution to the state's economic downturn and its one state depression.

Snyder promised moderate and reasonable re-inventive, pro-active scenarios designed to cure our economic ills and now for one entire year, the one MAJOR area of greatest concern: JOBS, Snyder has been purposefully neglected. Meanwhile, anti-family, anti-worker, anti-public service mavens carve out entire sections of our economy for private gain.

WE GET IT NOW
Let things go south/go sour as far as possible, then come in with radical disaster capital style-solutions. We got the Wild West of American Legislative Exchange Council Corporate "put and take" legislation: Everything business wants, nothing for the 99 % who are essentially all of us.

2011 was the year of the TeaPublicans and Snyder played both ARSONISTS AND FIREMEN with the economy and the general welfare of our citizens. They ravished and defiled democratic principles.

NO JOBS and attendant UNSUSTAINABLE LEVELS OF UNEMPLOYMENT face the nervous populace and Nerd Snyder smirks at us; just wait he has a plan! We have been promised on jobs and an upsurge in manufacturing, yet the Nerd is NADA on progress in this area!

The TeaPublican SuperMajority in Lansing is on a vicious rampage; delivered in large part by outside forces: Dick Armey, Charles and David Koch (KOCH, DAVID (NY), donated $988,604 to MI GOP related PAC's) pushed the Americans for Prosperity, its efforts headed up by Ruppert's/ FOX's infamous Dick Morris. Capitalizing on angry people, who would come out to shout and banish side arms, gin up their neighbors at the breakfast bar or the local dive-they succeeded in pulling off a classic astroturf rebellion-the Michigan legislative elections of 2010. This was and is a one time event!

These TP/ non-participating Libertarian-leaning curmudgeons in biker garb and beer caps are a natural extension of ABATE and fans of the aging, amoral, obscene/punk/pundit /rocker, Ted Nugent. Their Bagger Themes: We Got Ours! We fight all taxes. Just leave us alone. Michissippi: A state inhabited by these types and some nearly three dozen radical, armed, extremist militia groups is headed in a hellacious and destructive direction.

Allowing TeaPartisans who pander and pony up to the Corporatocracy has not brought relief from unemployment nor has it resulted in new industry, manufacturing and or jobs. In fact, one of the corporations represented on the Board of Directors for Business Leaders for Michigan, American Axle, is pulling up, leaving a gapping hole in Michigan's manufacturing base and with the loss of 500 jobs (on Snyder's ticket) that's a move that has a multiplier of at least 6 additional jobs lost elsewhere in the economy. That's as many as 3,000 Michigan JOBS GONE!


Original.

Michissippi (Michigan) 2011 in Review: Political & Commercial Oppression Inverts Local Control

Michissippian TeaPublican Super Majorities have struck a death blow to the heart of Local Control/the sovereignty of Local Option-freedom whereby local political jurisdictions, typically counties or municipalities, can decide by popular vote...and govern concerning issues within their borders. C. G Bateman, in Nicaea and Sovereignty:

"For centuries past, the idea that a state could be sovereign was always connected to its ability to guarantee the best interests of its own citizens." .

Thus, if a state could not act in the best interests of its own citizens, it could not be thought of as a "sovereign" state." Michigan is no longer a sovereign state (by this standard: "the best interests of its own citizens"). State government that acts in the best interests of its citizens honors and respects local control at the community level.

Michissippi has backslid downward into a state run by, for, and in control of the demands of big business (Business Leaders for Michigan & The Michigan Chamber of Commerce), rich One Percenter elites, and heartless inexperienced and under-qualified political hacks.

Heed the warning of Ayn Rand in this regard:

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
-- Ayn Rand

TeaPublicans have established Lansing Central Planning and Dictatorial Control in this terrible year of reckless and extravagant partisan/corporate legislative advantage. The rights of Michissippi's minority have been trampled into oblivion- popular sovereignty has been legislated away.

In our republic government is under the control of the people, or some significant portion of them, the citizens retain sovereignty over the government not vice versa.

Michissippi has in one tragic year reached what Ayn Rand would call a state of "inversion." All is not well as we enter the new year and more radical right mischief and corporate merrymaking at working people's expense.

Original.

If Only Michissippian TeaPartisans Would Stand Up to the Bullies at the Michigan Chamber...

Those like The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Koch Bros.’ Michigan Chapter of the Americans for Prosperity’s Ranting Rabble

If only Alexander Hamilton could have foreseen the ravishes and rashness of vengeful TeaPartisans in the ruinous TeaPublican led extension of the musty and dank Engler Revolution (the 2011 Legislative Session), bitter partisanship now headed up by a myopic and weak Nerd Beancounter who thinks he owns the right to dictate to citizens of this state following his evisceration of many state programs and budget responsibilities.

But alas!

"We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton-The Federalist Papers Federalist No. 85

Who can save us from a radicalized TeaPublican state legislature reeking havoc on all its enemies, a bully-boy super majority, out of control and disrespectfulof all minority rights?


Original.

Prof. Gary Wolfram of the Michigan View Let’s His Little Light Shine On Greed

Response to Gary Wolfram in "The Gift of Liberty"  re-posted in the Michigan View on Christmas Day, first appeared on December 23, 2011.

Thank You, Thank You, Professor Gary - Just Don't tell Scrooge or Father Bob Sirico about the truism you just penned - this statement which you planted in your Greed-minded Christmas essay. And you think you have a right to expand insight on the Christian Christmas Message!

Wolfram writes:

"Christmas is a time to be grateful and to make every effort to help the family of mankind. This means private charity, giving of our own time, treasure, and talent to others. It does not mean asking our government to engage in what Frederic Bastiat called 'legalized plunder'...."

That is so revealing and true. "LEGALIZED PLUNDER" via bill writing and legislation in Lansing. Taking from some people to give to others - perfectly describes this TERRIBLE YEAR plundered by the Teapartisan "LEGISLATION OF THIEVES".

Whew, Prof. You surly hit the THE NAIL ON THE HEAD: 'LEGALIZED PLUNDER" that's a most accurate and also tradgic, so fitting, a descriptor; identifying the DESTRUCTIVE WORK of the  Class of 2011 Lansing Teapublicans - SO WILLFULLY BLIND, SO SELF-DELUDED, SO AGGRESSIVELY DESTRUCTIVE!

Prof. Gary must have hurriedly put on his hair shirt, inside out and backwards.

What a revelation: "LEGALIZED PLUNDER." What an apt term for the rapid disintegration of civic core values and precedents gutting established state laws and citizen privileges during this "blitz" of TeaPublican aggression. It is our common purpose and unity as citizens that has bound our great state into a unified society for all its history! It was that spirit, that willingness to be craftsmen and labors, working mothers, and sacrificial businesses that salvaged America from the Nazis.

Wofram:

"It's a time to recognize our good fortune in living in a system based on market capitalism and limited government. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out nine decades ago: this is the only system that can produce WEALTH FOR ALL."

How clever an academic device! Just put Ludwig in the manger at Bethlehem,encourage the idea that von Mises is to become the object of our Christmas adoration!

Freedom to Deny Freedom
When Rad Right advocates, Prof. Gary among them, cry for more "freedom." Think of what such "freedom" may actually involve: They want freedom to use government for their own ends unhindered and they want government out of their ideological projects.

Keep firmly in mind the fact that:

"[T]he individual freedoms destroyed by the increase in national authority have been in the main freedom to deny black Americans their elementary rights as citizens, the freedom to work little children in the mills...the starvation wages...the freedom to pollute the environment--all freedoms that, one supposes, a civilized society can really do without."
--Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in "The Cycles of American History"

Wolfram's "The Gift of Liberty" is right up there with Marvin Olasky's tortuous babble:

"Olasky's most famous book is The Tragedy of American Compassion, which in 1992 Newt Gingrich distributed to incoming Republican representatives of the104th Congress. The book, an overview of poverty-fighting in America from colonial times to the 1990s, argues that private individuals and organizations, particularly Christian churches, have a responsibility to care for the poor, and contends that challenging personal and spiritual help, common until the 1930s, was more effective than the government welfare programs of recent decades. Olasky argues that GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ARE INEFFECTIVE because they are disconnected from the poor, while private charity has the power to change lives because it allows for a personal connection between giver and recipient."

"The book eventually helped to define "compassionate conservatism" in relation to welfare and social policy. In 1995, Olasky became an occasional advisor toTexas gubernatorial candidate George W. Bush. Bush made faith-based programs a major component of his 2000 presidential campaign, and Olasky's academic work helped form the basis for Bush's "compassionate conservatism."

Source: Marvin Olasky entry in Wikipedia

Being so Greedy to the core - how long before Prof. Gary swears off the church; accosting it for coercing its members-with the threat of eternal punishment-should they fail-to contribute their tithes and personal assets so the Chruch can provide for all the immense needs roiling up in Michigan due to the evacuation of disposable income via billions in CORPORATE AND BUSINESS WELFARE, economic activity/turnaround money needed to operate thriving businesses and good government here in Michigan.

Wolfram Echoes Ayn Rand's rants: The Virtue of Selfishness. Altruism /Generosity is a Randian "sin." Only pure self-interest is redemptive/commercially worthy of the "marketplace." Or as Milton Friedman so often proclaimed: "GREED IS GOOD."

Prof. Gary's "Freedoms": Wolfram's Freedoms to pursue things that are not in the best interest of mankind, they fester toward the death of community. Prof. Gary's ruminations are loosely akin to the elements in King Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the darkside of the Christmas story.

Prof. Gary: Turning out collegiate minds in whom the milk of human kindness is "freeze dried" holds no benefit for those who are in need or out of work. Such graduates have been trained to be unfit for community service. Wolfram's army of Hayekian Stormtroopers hold no promise for a better tomorrow. Just follow the carnage inflicted on mankind by just one of his most infamous protege the Bloody-handed mercenary, Erik Prince.

Original Response to Original essay by Gary Wolfram.

The Free Fire Kill Zone: Snyder’s War on Michigan’s Real People

"Kill them all! Let God sort them out!" Kill as many of the programs and benefits and opportunities for the middle and working class, the poor, the mentally ill and the greatly disadvantaged as politically possible.

Select vets of Viet Nam wore black silk windbreakers emblazoned and embroidered with screaming eagles swooping down with sharpened claws out- stretched wide in fierce attack: Kill them all! Let God sort them out!

Teary Eyes & A Stone Cold Heart
What kind of man, nerd or not, snivels and cries on camera about being "bullied" all through elementary and high school, AND EVEN COLLEGE; while AT THE SAME time taking the big stick of the legislative and governmental police powers to devastate and eviscerate programs intended, and formerly legislated in good faith, laws and acts to protect and promote the "general welfare" and defend the "commonweal of Michigan." To do this during a time of deep trial and economic depression in the state is an abomination and a travesty of the legislative and democratic process. It is a monumental rebuke to the rights of the minority in the democratic process.

Rick Snyder Is at Total War with His Own State's People
Snyder is a Business Mercenary devoted to the good and promotion of profit and commercial competition; without bounds of prudence and good sense.

Snyder the NERD is a stick puppet for the aggressive Chamber of Commerce, Aggressive Richard D. McLellan: Super Lawyer & associated Insurance Concerns, the national Heritage Foundation, Charles and David Koch, the Amway Cabal, and corporations with deep and powerful control of major sections of manufacturing and commerce in the state (Dow, Consumers Energy) .

Snyder and his compliant Commercial Raiders are out to Kill -- let God sort out the carnage and the human misery and suffering Snyder and their greed is creating. Michissippi has come. Snyder is on the Kill.

The Snyder/Tea Party Kill Zone-State & National Hits:

• Kill Social Security
• Kill Medicare
• Kill National Health Care
• Kill Public Schools
• Kill Collective Bargaining
• Kill Unions
• Kill Women's Rights
• Kill Fraud Regulations
• Kill Environmental Controls: The EPA
• Kill Local Control 'Right of Self Determination'
• Kill Revenue
• Kill Civility
• Kill Bipartisanship
• Kill Science
• Kill the right to Vote/Decimate Minority Voting Rights
• Kill Compromise and Collaboration
• Kill Religious Tolerance
• Kill Immigration
• Kill the 'Jesus Spirit' and Caring in Public Life
• Kill All New Taxes
• Kill legitimate infrastructure projects
• Kill protection of the Great Lakes from invasive species and deadly pollutants
• Kill Affirmative Action
• Kill No-Fault Auto Insurance
• Kill Workers Comp
• Kill Rights and Privileges of Labor PAC's To Operate On Par With Business/Corporate/Party PAC's
• Kill the 6 Month Recovery Period Before Final Foreclosure
• Kill K-12 Funding by Suspect Conversion to K-16
• Kill Teacher Professionalism Via Destruction of Awarded Tenure & Pummeled Disrespect
• Kill Extended Unemployment In a Time of Ultimate Need
• Kill Welfare's Safety Net Via Arbitrary Cut-Offs
• Kill State Police Protection Via Downgrading to Lower Grade/Politically Run County Mounty Service
• Kill Economic Development
• Kill Manufacturing in Favor of Outsourcing-China and Other Third World Sweatshops and Centers of Child Labor
• Kill Local Public/Neighborhood Schools Via So-Called 'Conversion Schools'
• Kill Minimum Wage
• Kill State and Local Incentives for New Business Development
• Kill High Standards Certification for Educators
• Kill Four Year College Degrees
• Kill Domestic Partner Benefits
• Kill Medical Marijuana
• Kill Confidence in Government
• Kill Statesmanship
• Kill the Legislative Bill Introduction Process-Farm- Out Pro-Corporate Bills out to the Koch Bros. funded American Legislative Exchange Council

Rick "Nerd" Snyder has abused the process of responsible governance and created a killing zone, a dead zone, in Michigan which will haunt and oppress Michiganders for years to come.


Original.

Occupy America: Finding a Way to Free Citizens of the 99% from the “Mastery of the Ignoble elite.”

The hand-cranked memographers failure at the mighty propaganda mill - Mackinac Center for Public Policy - to do "the right thing" has caused it to lose all claim to pro-active philosophy, a sustainable fairness and renewal direction for Michigan.

This is profoundly sad and frightening.

It is the Mackinac Center incessant pounding of the legislature with proto-lobbying and the hectoring of the public to achieve their privatization and for-profit goals (while destroying and undermining the necessary order of Michigan and the everyday lives of its working people) that is creating ugly Michissippi - a newly decimated state pushed to be run over by TeaPublicans "gone wild" under the tutelage and direction of the Koch Bros., Amway, big oil, American Legislative Exchange Council put-and-take legislation and other mega corporations. These have put their demands well before the needs of Michigan's struggling populace.

The Mackinac Center is not conservative. The Mackinac Center is not moral. The Mackinac Center has lost all sense of religious mores. The Mackinac Center is a blight on traditional conservatism as led by Michigan's own Dean of Conservatism, the late Russell Kirk. The 'ignoble' mega-wealthy who back and propel Mackinac Center are not worthy of statesmanship and honor. They and their goals are ignoble.

Read this assessment of Russell Kirk's impact as relates to TRUE CONSERVATISM:

"First among the concerns of modern conservatives is the regeneration of spirit and character, by which Kirk means the renewal of religious ideals, the one sure foundation for a life worth living.

"Kirk cautions that political Christianity, in which God is a means to an end, will not suffice. Rather, spiritual renewal must be done for its own sake.

"The conservative is also concerned, as Kirk has mentioned before, with the PROBLEM OF LEADERSHIP, which has two aspects: the preservation of reverence, order, discipline, and class and the cleansing of our system of education, so that it can become liberal in the best sense of that word.

Stated Kirk "ONLY JUST LEADERSHIP CAN REDEEM SOCIETY FROM THE MASTERY OF THE IGNOBLE ELITE."
(emphasis added)

Excerpted from "Russell Kirk: The Conservative Mind".

America Faces Coming Judgment for Its Unbridled Worship of Pagan Mammonism

The Mackinac Center stands squarely with the Godless paganism of Ayn Rand, Friedman, Greenspan and others who exult the individual above the community and the congregation of the righteous, and still too, the common good, must be seen for what it actually is, a pagan libertarianism: Mammon whose fixation on "freedom" has degenerated into a raid on the foundations of our Republic; its banking and investment services, and yes, upon the distinctly religious basis given American life by the Framers of the Constitution.

Occupy America with righteousness and restore probity to the government and its institutions; stand with those who demand that business abide by moral standards. Too many of the "smartest men in the room" would have us believe that in America, if something has the force of law - a proposal is made into legal statues it bears the impress of morality, not so. All that is called 'legal' is not all moral. Legal is not necessarily 'moral.'

Americans suffer under many laws and corporate designer regulations that are anything but moral and righteous; beneficial to the common welfare.

Join Kirk's fight against twisted ideology and the corruption of real conservatism by the greedy usurpers mentioned above. Be genuinely 'Conservative.'
________

It is said that mankind faces judgment by God in the afterlife. Nations, however, receive their judgment and punishment in this life. America stands to face harsh judgment from God in the here-and-now. Repent.

Will repentance now be too late to save our fair land?

For more on the 1% follow the "Mega-Wealthy" and "Wealthy Elites" tags on the Gazette.

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The great experiment in liberty we enjoy in America: a deliberate attempt to establish a conservative order of stability, justice and honor

The "hard" ideology, Hard America, Soft America, that Michael Barone ('Hard America plays for keeps.') has so much encouraged as the bedrock of 'conservatism' in the mindset of the present day GOP, is corrosive and deleterious to the present and future of our country. The harshness encouraged by a select cadre of mega-wealthy-to be ensconced as a standard of suppression for the 99 %, the rest of us--is the sure road to national disillusionment and collapse.

While the many foundations and so-called Think Tanks they back: Koch/Cato, Amway/Heritage, Sarah Scaife, John M. Olin/ Lynde and Harry Bradley & ExxonMobil/Heartland make ardent efforts to shape public policy and mold legislation; they continue to actively undermine freedom and personal liberty in aggressive ways. One group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, having come out of the shadows and into the harsh light (via Walker in Wisconsin) has already done equal, irreparable harm to Michigan and other states by directly enacting corporate designed bills directly introduced by A.L.E.C. member Legislators and moved seamlessly into state laws (Michigan has upwards of 200 present or past members of the legislature who are in league with the American Legislative Exchange Council.) Best known currently is Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester; albeit there are many others, willing "tools" in the present legislatue.

The recent revelations of the impact of the "front group," The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, highlight and ring alarm bells as to the untoward and aggressive "programming" such groups in league with A.L.E.C. have had in service of an elite group of mega-wealthy and corporatists in hot pursuit of their own well-being and advancement, the public be damned. Such revelations are a renewed warning that such private serving "think tanks" are too much in control of America, and Michigan in particular. The damage they are doing with devolution of law and standards of living and common sense are rightfully alarming as they are extremely dangerous to Michiganians' "pursuit of happiness" and economic and personal freedoms.

The Real & Abandoned 'Conservative' Idealism

'The great experiment in liberty we enjoy in America was a deliberate attempt to establish a conservative order of stability, justice and honor. The tremendous freedoms that we exercise were thus carefully secured against the arbitrary and fickle whims of men and movements by the rule of law. Our social system was not designed so as to depend on the benevolence of the magistrates, or the altruism of the wealthy, or the condescension of the powerful. Every citizen, rich or poor, man or woman , native born or immigrant, hale or handicapped, young or old, is under the standard of unchanging, immutable , and impartial justice.

'As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the powerful booklet that helped spark the War for Independence, 'In America, the law is king.'

'If left to the mere discretion of human authorities, even the best-intended statues, edicts, and ordinances inevitably devolve into some form of death-dealing tyranny. There must, therefore, be an absolute against which on encroachment of prejudice or preference may interfere. There must be a foundation that the winds of change and the waters of circumstance cannot erode. There must be a basis for law that can be depended upon at all times, in all places, and in every situation.

'Apart from this uniquely Christian innovation in the affairs of men and nations, there can be no freedom. There never has been before, and there never will be again. Our Founding Fathers knew that all too well. The opening refrain of the Declaration of Independence affirms the necessity of that kind of absolute standard upon which the rule of law can be established:

"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'

"Appealing to the 'Supreme Judge of the World' for guidance, and relying on His 'Divine Providence' for wisdom, the framers committed themselves and their posterity to the absolute standard of 'laws of nature and of nature's God.' A just government exists, they argued, solely and completely to 'provide guards' for the 'future security' of that standard. Take away those guards, and the rule of law is no longer possible."

"G.K. Chesterton once quipped that 'America is the only nation founded on a creed.' Other nations find their identity and cohesion in ethnicity, or geography, or cultural tradition. But America was founded on certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility.

"It was this profound peculiarity that most struck Alexis de Tocqueville during his famous visit to this land at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He called it 'American Exceptionalism.'

"Thomas Jefferson asserted that 'the chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.'"

So wrote conservative author George Grant in his book "Buchanan: Caught In The Crossfire".

Certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility are indeed at stake in America, and more acutely for us, here in Michigan. When the law is bent to serve business and corporations at the exclusion of all others, this is wrong. This present Michigan TeaPublican legislature is spinning flat, out of control of the citizens of this state, hell bent to serve the immediate and long-term needs of the Corporatocracy and the elites; 1%ers and wannabees who have the cash to move a "hard" agenda ...all others excluded.


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