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House Dems won't face budget reality
Nolan:
What is the difference between your opinion and that of the standard Mackinac Center fare?
What would Michigan be like if the center had gotten 80% of all the things they lust after? (Most often, with your blessing, one might note.)
The MacCen sees this present economic hardship time as a precious opportunity to finish work they've been whittling at for decades. This "crisis" for them is a super "opportunity."
Just what would education quality and taxpayer responsibility for education be if MacCen got its every wish?
Those cardinal controling influences in the MacCen, who cheer for an end to MESSA (and its excellent Blue Cross health care packages for school employees),ask just what would other (Mackinac Center friendly) insurance companies provide?
Think inadequate. How long would it be before they used their influence and cunning to reduce the service provided to something, not equal to the private sector, what ever that means, but less than the best of private sector benefits. That new health plan sought by the MacCen wouldn't be more competitive or less expensive without reductions in services and coverages. And who, Nolan, has decent private sector health care and benefits, as of this Michigan moment? Don't look to the GM workers for a baseline, don't turn to the ubiquitous Wall-Mart for a adequate health care model.
The core of the Michigan GOP is held hostage to the tax-haters and groups like the brown-bagged-headed-unknowns, secret bundlers of cash used to bring national influence to bear on a rural district like that once held by former Rep. Joe Schwarz.
When the intrepid clod buster Jack Welborn wanted to stigmatize the "high spending" legislature he brought over to the capitol a giant cow with an enormous utter, then Welborn prattled on about his opponents sucking up for tax monies.
Then it was Leon Dorlet and his begged and borrowed pink hog, which lingered on Capitol square, hoping to chide and hector the legislature into refusing to raise revenue and taxes. Dorlet was just carrying swill for a well-known national organizer against taxes.
Then came the Beltway weasel, Grover Norquist, who smoozed on Mackinac Island with Sen. Nancy Cassis. "No new taxes, no new taxes." This year's entire proceedings in the Mackinac Island leadership sessions were sponsored, run by the no-taxes lobbies and the endless varieties of flat, fair, or no tax fanatics (including John Fund) who believe themselves the keepers of the holy grail. Starve the state's services into oblivion and all will be well.
A large number of the GOP legislature has given up their rights to outsiders, carpet baggers from DC, when they swear and take an oath never to raise new taxes. Thank God for term limits.
The hard-hearted, conjoined twins of no-tax legislation in the state senate are Mike Bishop and Alan Cropsey. What an odd couple, if ever. Both are ambitious and both have a shed full of axes they love to grind. Bishop loves embarrassing Gov. Granholm and Cropsey won't ever miss a swipe at the Michigan Education Association, ever since he threw in with the fearful home schoolers hoping to scotch maternity, creeping secularism, and of course, the teaching about evolution by holing up in the kitchen with course books designed to propagate the fanatic ideology and race relations teachings of Bob Jones University, Cropsey's alma mater.
So then, who's reality must a citizen chose between: . Democrats who are weakly trying to save the future for our kids against the entrenched GOP Senate, or the ranting GOP which sees no end of pleasure in tearing down Michigan and its children in their hour of need. They are holding out for the equivalent of a cup of less-than-Starbucks coffee a day.
You'd get the idea from Bishop and his clique that it would bankrupt our struggling personal budgets to give just an additional dollar a day (in miscellaneous taxes and closed loopholes) to save our public schools in this their hour of need.
Biased conclusion
Think of the situation this way. The "big money" folk have just affected one of the largest cash conversions in history.
There was the market at 14,000 and at that peak, the "smartest men in the room" those who play the entire Wall Street game with high tec means chose to "harvest the market" and little guy and the unsuspecting took a big hit.
Getting the government to bail out those large financial institutions (TARP) labeled about to bring on "total collapse" was like icing on their cake.
The subsequent mega consolidations and big bonus offerings inside these federally fattened corporations are now revealing a grand coup at taxpayer expense.
When the conditions are judged just right, these "big money" people will get back into the market and double or more their money. It's their world and their game. Little guy beware.
401K people and individual investors suckered into the market believing it to be a trustworthy and predictable means to earn gains will have to grin and bear it.
To pin the blame on President Obama is noteworthy for its narrow partisanship, but not the whole story. What about that now unnamed, forgotten man, George W. Bush who brought the whole "near collapse" to a head well before the national election.
Nolan Finley's bad roads this winter
Nolan has a problem that could be cured by additional revenue. Nolan projects himself into winter were he travels the roads and highways, with a bit of forethought he comes to the nagging conclusion that things on those pavements will be unsafe because of budget shortfalls.
How perceptive and insightful. Nolan suddenly has a problem which a few tax dollars additional on his part would help solve.
He's worried that he might be impacted, or worse yet hurt or killed for the lack of a little salt on the roadways.
Nolan has no problem with clawing back all kinds of revenue for a myriad of other important state services and provisions, salaries and/or benefits.
He can standby mute while a humble handicapped person with a fatally infected tooth dies for lack of treatment because of the cutbacks that Nolan staunchly editorialized for, begged the GOP legislature to make, were imposed.
At last we have found a tax-funded activity that grabs Nolan by the small hairs.
Why don't you take a scoop and a bucket with you Nolan, and make a voluntary citizen's contribution to safer winter roads by a private act on your part.
Toss some salt on icy pavement. That way you can alleviate, in a token way, the possibility that "you and your loved ones" may be in danger because of cut-backs you backed. Pray they won't be harmed by the general lack of winter roadway maintenance and service due to "no new taxes."
Just throw that dash or two of salt or sand out your window whenever you feel threatened by threatening or dangerous conditions created by lack of service from the tax-starved highway department.
This way perhaps you won't have to feel responsible for all the real damage you do with your encouragement of tax-hater's parsimony and your pinch-penny rants.
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