Redstate

By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | Michigan | taxes — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Want a job in Michigan?  Move to Hollywood.  It's almost literally come to that.  In a mixed up, crazy, backwards world la-la-land always seemed like the world of dreams, where movie magic happened.  Now, thanks to you, fair tax payer, it's also the land where your hard earned dollar goes.  And the worst part?  That's the good news this morning.

Alright, so there's a little more good news out there if you're really looking for it.  The Tigers didn't lose yesterday, which is always a plus.  If you're a fan or alum of the Kansas Jayhawks you're probably dreary eyed but exuberant this morning.  The sun is going to come out again today.  Things like that.  Good things.  Oh, and our friends on the picket line down at American Axle?  All 3,600 of them finally have a little shred of hope.  Maybe.  Which means that the tens of thousands of workers at the thirty individual auto plants that have been shuttered or scaled back because of parts shortages, they can cross their fingers and hope against hope too.  Because, good news, the UAW boss stopped mucking around with Democrat Presidential politics (something he isn't very good at anyways, if you judge the man on his work product... still no resolution to our delegate mess?) long enough yesterday to actually do his day job and actual real life negotiators from Big Labor and the Michigan manufacturer will start meeting today and tomorrow.  The Associated Press reports:

The resumption of talks came after a meeting Monday between UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and company CEO Richard Dauch. Although details of the meeting weren't released, company spokeswoman Renee Rogers said the meeting was productive.

Top negotiators for both sides will meet Tuesday and full teams will bargain on Wednesday, Rogers said. The full teams have not met since March 10.

That's a full month, folks.  What, exactly, has the union been doing for the last month?  Isn't a strike supposed to be a negotiating tactic?  Tough to use it if you're not negotiating though.  Maybe they stayed away from the table because they knew it didn't have four legs to stand on?  Remember, they didn't walk off the job for "solidarity" or to end unjust labor practices.  Labor bosses like Gettelfinger called the strike to protect a few $73 an hour jobs while the exact same jobs at competitors plants pay closer to $20 an hour.  

Called the strike then started jet-setting with Carl Levin and Debbie Dingell and fancy-pants prominent national Democrats to try to resolve the whole Democrat primary mess here in Michigan.  An effort which has, to this point, failed miserably I might add.  All the while Ron left the men and women who look to him for leadership and representation with none of either, walking a cold, rainy, often snowy picket line for his defense of the obsolete.  

Then again, at least they're getting strike pay.  That's a few bucks a day more than four hundred workers at St. John Health in metro Detroit will be making after they get their pink slips this week.  

Oh yeah, forgot to mention.  Ron getting back to work is about as far as the good news goes this morning outside of tinsel town.  The Detroit News reports on the health care layoffs:

(T)he cuts are at least a minor setback to Michigan's efforts to grow its health care industry as one way to make up for the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years...

The nonprofit expects to lose about $177.4 million in bad debt and uncompensated care in its 2008 fiscal year, which ends June 30, a 25-percent increase from the year before. Its profit margins are also expected to fall to less than 1 percent in 2008, down from 2.35 percent the year before on net patient revenue of $1.7 billion.

They're still looking for nurses though.  Become a nurse.  Seriously.  People are always going to get sick and as long as there are nuts like Michael Moore out there driving the bullet-train to socialism there'll be some amount of compensation out there for your efforts.  

Speaking of movie makers, Jennifer Granholm wants you to know that a lot of them might come to Michigan now.  Ready to throw a party?  Maybe schedule a ticker tape parade to welcome George Clooney or Meryl Streep or Robert Redford or any one of her other pseudo-hippie icons.  Oh, right, when they make movies they don't exactly do those sorts of things.  They have "closed" sets, shut down traffic for days, weeks, months, close off sections of cities...but gee whiz they're cool.

I don't know about you but I'm excited.  Nothing gets me going more than the idea that somewhere in the State of Michigan there's going to be some famous person filming some piece of cinema.  How cool will it be to go to the theatre one day and look up and say "hey, I recognize that building!"  You know?  

And, bonus, all you have to pay for the privilege is somewhere around twenty-million dollars a year.  

Last week we talked about the fantastic package of legislation that'd moved through the House and Senate.  Under the bill a movie maker gets a tax credit worth up to 42% of the cost of production.  Not a tax break.  A tax credit.  In other words, you spend $10 million shooting a "low budget" flick here in Michigan you're going to get $420,000 from the State of Michigan.  

Apply that against the taxes the movie makers would normally be asked to pay.  Say it's $250,000.  In this example the people of the State of Michigan would literally cut a check to some Hollywood producer in the amount of $170,000 and thank him for visiting.  We're not just taking less... we're PAYING them to come visit for a few weeks.  The final estimated bill according to the Ivory Tower:

State officials said the amount of state spending on movie and TV production credits will depend on the number and size of qualifying projects. The initial estimate on the cost to the state in the 2009 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, is about $19 million, said Deputy State Treasurer Scott Schrager.

Although an analysis by the state Senate Fiscal Agency suggested the incentives are so generous the net effect could be a decline in state tax revenues, Granholm insisted the immediate economic impact from filmmakers is worth it.

Sorta like a New Deal for Hollywood?  Pay multi-millionaires nineteen million dollars so they'll spend a couple bucks on coffee and sandwiches?  

I've said it before and it's no less true now.  This reminds me of that old playground insult... you're so ugly your mama has to tie a steak around your neck to get the dog to play with you.  

What are these people thinking?  And how does some other industry, any other industry, get this sort of package from the Governor?  Promise ANY company in ANY industry to completely eliminate their tax burden and then to write them a giant check and guess what, folks will come flooding into Michigan.  

If you're looking at it strictly as a job creation endeavor, hey, bully on you.  It'll work.  No doubt.  Just like it worked when FDR paid people to dig holes and fill them back in again, or to chop down trees or, whatever... just remember that it took a World War to get us out of that economic mess.  What's going to save Michigan?  And does anybody smell sizzler?