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

More than two years after committing over twenty specific, egregious campaign finance violations, freshman Democratic Congressman Mark Schauer is finally being forced to pay the piper.  

Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land announced this week that Schauer has been hit with the largest punishment for campaign finance violations in the history of the state of Michigan!  According to the Lansing State Journal:

The campaign fund of former Democratic state Sen. Mark Schauer of Battle Creek is paying the state $208,250 for improperly donating money to help elect Democrats to the Senate in 2006.

Thus concludes a story we’ve been discussing here on Right Michigan since all the way back in December.  Of 2007.  The Battle Creek Enquirer reported at the time:

Schauer chaired the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and oversaw the Senate Democratic Fund, for which his bombastic chief of staff, Ken Brock, took over as treasurer.

The fund raked in $440,000 above the legal limit of $20,000 per person - which the Dems don’t deny. Twelve senatorial candidate committees did, with Schauer’s as the worst offender at $187,000.

The moolah was instantly pumped into the campaigns of four key candidates, three of whom were trounced anyway.

For state races, this is a staggering chunk of change. The grievance is pretty cut and dried (some might call it money laundering). When seven candidates got wind of the GOP’s secretary of state complaint, they ostensibly demanded a refund. Marky-Mark did not.

Here’s how Schauer’s illegal scheme worked.  The Congressman, then a state legislator decided to go ahead and raise a bunch of illegal campaign cash.  He received illegal money from Democrats including Carl Williams, Alexander Lipsey, Bob Schockman, Gretchen Whitmer, Mickey Switalski, Buzz Thomas, Liz Brater, Mike Prusi, Gilda Jacobs, Glenn Anderson and Mark Slavens and then pitched in $187,000 himself.  Mind you, the limit is $20,000.  

Once the Democrats realized they’d been discovered each of the folks who were still working in the legislature went ahead and asked for refunds.  

Essentially they said “oops, our mistake, don’t punish us for it!”  Prusi, Whitmer, Switalski, Brater, Thomas, Slavens and Jacobs all took their illegal cash back, admitting they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and trying to make things right (well after the fact).

But no such change of heart from Mark Schauer.  When he breaks the law he stands by his criminal activity!  And he stands by his man, too.  Ken Brock, the anti-Semite who’s racist comments drew the ire of everyone in Michigan except Mark Schauer, was the Senator’s treasurer on this particular money laundering operation and signed all of the papers.  

Until this week there was no backing down from either of them.

Still, the settlement with the Secretary of State winds up being a peach of a deal, compared with the penalties that COULD be exacted.  Each violation of this particular statute brings along a penalty of as much as 90 days in jail and / or serious monetary fines.  Schauer admitted to twenty-two violations.
That’s nearly 5 ½ years in jail.  

By comparison, I’d say Congressman Schauer got off pretty easy.  Only time will tell, though, how seriously his constituents frown on an admission from their Representative in DC that he broke the law twenty-two times.

I’m a generous guy. Alas, I’m also chronically cynical. So it takes a concerted effort for me, at times, to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it started in college, working at Fulton Heights Foods where it turned out that everyone who instinct said was going to write a bad check or try to sneak out with steaks tucked under their shirts turned out to be every bit the crook you figured.

Maybe it was all of those group-projects in school… burned too many times after convincing myself the under-achievers the teacher always seemed to assign my squad would actually show up the next day with their share of the work completed.

Heck, it was probably that fourth grade class Christmas party when my “Secret Santa,” Carla Parker, wrapped and gave me used ChapStick (I wish I was making that up) while my friends were opening GI Joes and Transformers. Freaking Carla Parker.

Lets be honest, though… what do raw steak thieves, lazy students and gift-wrapped garbage have on your average politician. Did I mention that I’m a generous guy?

I am, though. Or I try to be. So when Michigan and Congressional Democrats prattle on and on about the need for lobbyist reform, for a new era of ethics and for transparency I want to take them at their word. I trust the Democratic Party about as far as I can log-toss Mark Brewer but individually, I do the best I can.

Still, there comes a time when even the most gracious observer is left scratching his head. How can someone like Michigan’s Senator Debbie Stabenow, for instance, say the things she says and vote the way she votes (remember, this is a woman who voted to create a ”Senate Office of Public Integrity”) and then sit by while the husband who shares her home, and bank account, presumably, rakes in a half-year’s income by working illegally as a lobbyist for a scandal-prone Detroit area developer? And lobbying in favor of a project she made a point of opposing during her last bid for office?

Something just doesn’t sit right. Red flags pop out of every corner of this thing, as much as the bulk of the mainstream media would like to ignore them. Bells and whistles, too. It is obvious that the Senator understood what her husband was doing these past six months, so I’ll ask the obvious question… what would motivate a twice-elected member of the United States Senate to cast aside all of her best rhetoric and surrender her moral high ground?

If it weren’t for a lifetime spent watching Law and Order re-runs I wouldn’t know where to start but the embarrassingly large number of hours spent watching the procedural has taught me one thing about detective work… follow the money.

A quick review of public records tells us that Tom Athen’s boss, developer Jim Papas knows two things; one, how to rake in millions of dollars from Detroit pension funds despite chronic failure and two, how to scribble checks to Democrats. And not tiny ones, either.

According to the Bureau of Elections and the FEC, Papas has given the Democratic Party and her candidates over $240,000 in just over four-years time.

Andy Dillon brought home $2,500 in Papas money. John Kerry’s Victory Fund saw an influx of $25,000. Even freshman Congressman Mark Schauer got in on the act, bringing in $2,300. The big winners, though, are the sort of accounts that can make a difference to a woman like Senator Stabenow.

Papas wrote checks of $10,000 to the Michigan Democratic Party, $25,000 to the Democratic National Committee, another $25K to the Democratic Congressional Committee and a fat $30 Gs to the Senate Democratic Fund.

That’s not chump change.

The number that could best explain Senator Stabenow’s decision to turn a blind eye to the blatant illegality, ethics and lobbyist violations happening right under her nose remains a mystery, though. Just how much Papas money found its way into her bank account while her husband broke the law to support a toxic waste well Stabenow once claimed she opposed?

I’d like to believe the best about people, even Democratic Senators… but the cynic in me says that every Senator has her price. This is one time I hate to be proven right.

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

Promoted by Jeff

United States Senators are busy people with demanding schedules.  Its understandable if one of the most powerful members of the most powerful legislative body in the nation doesn’t know where her husband is and what he is doing twenty-four hours of every day.  Still, you’d think better than a half-a-year employed by one of your major campaign donors as an illegally unregistered lobbyist… advocating a project you made a point of running against during your last statewide election… might raise a red flag or two.

That’s the reality Senator Debbie Stabenow has faced for the last six months as her husband, Tom Athens, made bank on the payroll of Democratic mega-donor and alleged lothario Jim Papas.  Unfortunately, despite the unending rhetoric about transparency and ethics in the Dem controlled Congress, the Senator who once voted to establish the Senate Office of Public Integrity chose to turn a blind eye to her husband’s criminal actions, putting him, partisan election interests and the family bank account above Michigan residents and campaign promises.

Meanwhile, voters and taxpayers are left with more questions than answers…

How long has Senator Stabenow known her husband was breaking the law, making a living as an unregistered lobbyist?

Read More →

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

Today is the big day for the Big 3.  They’ll be back in Washington, DC, hat in hand and corporate jets temporarily mothballed in the hanger back in Detroit.  At least one of the CEO’s will drive a brand new car to the hearings while the others are mum on their modes of transportation, but however they get there, they’ll make sure they’ve got their tin cup in hand.  Because that worked so well last time.

The top execs are all expected to talk, in depth, about major restructurings and even personal pay cuts, surrendering to the anti-corporate frenzy (and probably rightly so, in this instance) after the way the Democrats in Congress scolded them before ignoring their plight this time last month.  Ron Gettelfinger and the United Auto Workers feel no need to curtsey other than to offer generalized statements about a willingness to deal if and only if their guy calls the shots.  The Ivory Tower:

…The UAW told Congress that it’s prepared to make major alterations in its deals with the automakers to help get loans approved, but only as part of broad restructurings that will require oversight by the Obama administration.

The UAW “will make it clear we could be facing the collapse of GM by the end of the year, and Chrysler soon after,” said UAW Legislative Director Alan Reuther. “We continue to believe bankruptcy is not a viable option.”

Of course bankruptcy doesn’t work for the UAW.  Bankruptcy would mean their lavish $73.20 an hour (average) contracts could be opened by the courts and things like the jobs bank, where folks get paid to watch paint peel, might be eliminated.  And speaking of the death of the jobs bank, could that be a part of the plan the Big 3 present to Congress today?  Has the UAW agreed to let that dinosaur go extinct?

The jobs bank, which pays workers for up to two years after a plant closes, has drawn criticism from lawmakers, even as the UAW contends it has been scaled back. A UAW spokesman was not available for comment Monday.

And its behavior like that that gives Michigan a black eye not just in DC but across the industrialized world.  An unwillingness to even discuss the elimination of a program that will give folks an average of $73.20 an hour, full-time for two years that demands zero work is sheer, unadulterated economic lunacy.  And the UAW won’t even comment?  They’ve scaled it back?  Wha?

That baby’s going to be some kind of scaled back after Big Labor and the Democrats in Congress are through scuttling any hopes of a bailout, that’s for sure.  And all just in time for the holidays.  Break out the freaking eggnog.  And heap a little more insult on top of injury.  The Detroit News reports this morning on the growing foreclosure crisis affecting Michigan like few other states and you’re going to love Senate Democrats’ idea for getting out of it:

Nearly 2 percent of all households — a total of 87,210 — were in foreclosure last year, ranking Michigan third in the nation.

The state’s foreclosure rate — the percentage of all loans in foreclosure — has doubled since mid-2006 to 3.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to a Mortgage Bankers Association survey, well above the U.S. rate of 2.75 percent.

So what do Michigan Democrats want to do about the problem?  Senate Democrat Hansen Clarke is calling for legislation that will make foreclosures illegal for two years.  Free room and board for everyone in the state for 730 days.  Because that won’t have any sort of effect on the banks and credit lines and the rest of the economy.  

I mean, seriously people, these are your ideas?  Which Senate Democrat is going to introduce the companion legislation making rainbows mandatory, giving every Michigan child a free pony and demanding all business transactions be performed with gum drops, not dollars?

Its all enough to drive a guy crazy.  Which is happening in spades anyway, apparently, in Flint.  The Flint Journal caught up with psychotherapist Dianne Dailey who is demanding Congress bail out F-town because without their help she’ll have to start working Saturdays.

“Those who still have insurance or a bit of cash are coming to my practice with more panic attacks, depression, fear, confusion and hopelessness than I have ever seen in our area,” said Dailey, who has done family and marital counseling in the Flint area since 1970…

Dailey has launched a personal campaign to get the word to Washington on how crucial the auto industry crisis is to the Flint area. She’s timing it to Tuesday’s due date for Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. to deliver plans to Congress on how they’d use the federal aid to restructure the industry.

But that’s not the best part… the quote of the day… “It is also affecting couples who are fighting more than ever over money. This in turn affects the children.”

Ah, the children.  Should have known this was all about the children.  

I appreciate what Dianne’s doing.  Its got to be tough work being a psychotherawhatsit in Flint, Michigan, getting all of those tough union guys to open up about their childhoods and their repressed anger issues.  Seriously.  Hats off to her.  But a suggestion… if she really wants to help the kids she should spend less time writing letters to the Democrats in Congress who are obviously hostile to her home town and a little more time writing to the Democrats in Lansing.  Kids love free ponies.

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

There are a couple of approaches for handling a day like today.  The four day weekend is over and it’s back to the grind but the snow continues to fall and it’s tempting to turn on the Christmas carols and move gently into the next holiday season.  Yeah, you’ll go to work, or school, or both and you’ll do what you need to do but you’ll coast a little and with visions of Christmas trees and sleigh rides.  Aww.  Warms the heart.  And good on you if you can pull that off.  

Then again, is that practical?  Can you carol your way through the next twenty-four days until you can manage another four day weekend?  Can you really fake oblivious?  Block out the real world and live in Christmastime daydreams for the next month?  I can’t.  So I took option number two for the Monday after Thanksgiving and I jumped right back into the news this morning.

All things being equal, I’d rather have the sugar plum fairies.  

We’ve got business leaders crying out to the state government for drastically needed relief from a financial crisis very much said state government’s making, we’ve got state officials openly discussing ways they can put job makers out of business and I don’t know what says “happy Monday” quite like the name Monica Conyers.

According to the Detroit News, the Democratic Congressman’s wife and head on the all-Dem Detroit City Council is caught up in another mess, this time suggesting openly that the Detroit Public Library is attempting to extort the council to gain control of river-front property.  See, they currently own a rundown, abandoned building and even though they’ve received cash offers of more than seven times what they paid for it two years ago (in Detroit!!!!) they refuse to sell and would rather raze the thing to the ground than see Conyers friends get their hands on it.

The Detroit Public Library is moving ahead with the demolition of a former storage building in the New Center neighborhood despite a dustup with City Council President Monica Conyers, who asked the library to consider selling it to a campaign donor.

The building, which the library bought in 2001 for $400,000 from the city, had become too run-down to affordably use, and now the organization will either sell the land or target the property for a future expansion project…

They got three bids to purchase the building that included $200,000 from the Farbman Group, $2 million from Metro Development Group Investors of Detroit and $3 million from Eugenio Company LLC of Grosse Pointe Woods.

Upon further investigation, library officials believed they could better market the property once the building was razed, (Library Building Committee head Ed) Thomas said, much like the strategy the city took in knocking down most of Tiger Stadium in hopes of attracting a developer.

Considering the fact that we’re talking about property in Detroit, Michigan, the city more famous than perhaps any other in the United States of America for blighted, burned and abandoned properties, I’m thinking $3 million is an awful good return on a $400,000 investment but, clearly, I’m not a real estate magnate.  If Ed Thomas thinks he can get more than $3 million by burning the thing to the ground and marketing the charred land, well, ok.  

Conyers thinks it smells fishy though and has accused the Public Library of refusing to sell the land until the Council gives them even better property down by the river.  (Get it?  Fishy?  River?  Nevermind.)

Read on…

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

A lot of news has focused these past two weeks on Detroit’s “Big 3,” Washington, DC and the space between, literally and figuratively, and with good reason.  There is universal agreement that the autos are in one heck of a mess, that it’s of their own making and that a lot of good, hard working people are going to suffer when whatever comes next finally arrives.

Of course, that’s all been compounded by the fact that the Democrats in Congress took the occasion of our governor’s ill-timed vacation to the Middle East to declare the entire state of Michigan persona non grata at our nation’s capitol.  Gone is Jennifer Granholm from Barack Obama’s economic advisory team and gone too is the dean of the US House of Representatives, Detroit Congressman John Dingell, from his leadership post on the committee most directly tied to the auto industry.  

That move in particular led the Ivory Tower’s Brian Dickerson to ask if the left-coast was intentionally “plotting Michigan’s ruin.”

Read on…

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

If this doesn’t prompt Capital Hill Democrats to get off their duffs and accept the administration’s offer to bail out the Big 3 with a $25 billion taxpayer funded loan I don’t know what will.  The patron saint of raunch was in the Motor City last night to deliver a rare Michigan concert and darn it all if she didn’t have a hard time finding anyone to bother showing up to ogle her.  Madonna, a Michigan native but one who abandoned her home state and then her country long ago, has never been shy about sharing her political opinions.  They usually start with an F-bomb which is then followed by the name of whichever conservative has dared raise her considerable dander.  Eff George W. Bush.  Eff Dick Cheney.  Eff Sarah Palin.  You get the idea.

When the ex-pat Material Girl isn’t lecturing American voters on politics all the way from her home in London she’s in Africa orchestrating high profile adoptions for her team of nannies, globe trotting with Alex Rodriguez (he has the heart of a poet, apparently) or, as it turns out, begging the few Detroiters who bothered to turn out for their adulation and approval.  

I know that I, for one, am really sorry I missed it.

Read on…

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

All of the flashy economic headlines in the state have to do with the will-they / won’t-they swirling around Capitol Hill Democrats as they consider whether or not to bail out the Big 3, but with Jennifer Granholm’s decision yesterday to take a break from her vacation tour of the Holy Land to tell President Bush that Michigan doesn’t want the $25 billion he’s already offered our ailing industry, and with Democrat leadership on the Hill moving slower than a snail towards any sort of resolution, let’s take a minute to look around the state and see what else is happening.

And where better, or worse, to start than back in and around the motor city where government run health care just killed 500 Michigan jobs.  You read that right.  The Oakland Business Review reports that Beaumont Hospitals just announced 500 job cuts in the high flying field of health care.  So much for those “jobs of tomorrow.”

The Royal Oak-based health system, on pace to post a full-year operating loss for what Matzick said was the first time in his 40-year career, is targeting the moves toward making a $60 million improvement in its financial position. Beaumont lost $16 million during the third quarter and expects to lose $22 million by year’s end.

No, it’s not because Detroiters are suddenly healthier.  Quite the opposite… Detroiters, many without jobs, continue to get sick and to depend on the government to provide their health care.  

The biggest factors driving the hospital’s deteriorating finances, Matzick said, include a shift toward more patients who rely upon government-funded Medicaid or Medicare insurance plans, which pay less than commercial plans. Beaumont has seen a drop of 1.5 percent in 2008 in the mixture of commercial insurance coverage by patients, Matzick said.

Chalk this one up to the perils of unintended consequences and let’s hope they’re paying attention in Lansing and DC where every move under the sun over the next four years of Democratic control is expected by most to move us quickly and firmly towards entirely nationalized health care.  Listen closely, my Democratic friends… if you take over the administration of health care you are going to kill Michigan jobs.

Read on…

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

More tickets.  That’s the answer to the Big 3’s financial problems.  If you missed it late yesterday, Ron Gettelfinger, the man pulling the strings for Big Labor as they attempt to extort another $25 billion from Congress said the problem with Detroit’s autos isn’t that their employees make, on average, about $45 an hour (all in) more than the average Michigan / American worker, it’s that the “economy” is in rough shape.  

Now if I could only put my finger on the why… but I digress… back to tickets.  The Detroit News managed to get some law enforcement folks on the record admitting what we’ve known for approximately forever… those speed traps and big dollar tickets for petty infractions aren’t about safe streets, they’re about making bank.  

“When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement,” Utica Police Chief Michael Reaves said. “But if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. That’s just the reality nowadays.”

A Detroit News analysis of court and police records from 2002-07 shows many Metro Detroit police departments have drastically increased the number of moving violations issued in what some people say is an effort to offset budget shortfalls caused by the sluggish economy.

Complain all you’d like, but rules are rules and these fees are, technically, avoidable.  Admittedly, it gets difficult when you get a big dollar “5 mph over” citation because your cruise control wasn’t precise enough and you were clocked doing 71 in a 70.  And it’s even tougher when a Lansing officer cites you for speeding because when she passed you driving the other way she noticed your brake lights flashed for a second.  Oh, and then there’s the “failure to stop” when you’re the 7th car in a 9 car pile-up and your dream car has already been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble.   …Rassa-frassa-stupid-frassa… I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

Oh, right, saving the economy through creative law enforcement.

Read on…

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

Well that didn’t take long.  The first full week of “lame duck” in the Democrat controlled Michigan House of Representatives and the majority party, emboldened by their big wins on election day, have already approved or set in motion more than a couple of tax hikes and special new spending projects because, obviously, Michigan families have way more money than they know what to do with.

Christmas presents, keeping the heat and the lights on, being able to afford a tire rotation as we get into the slippery season, pfah.  The Democratic Machine runs the show now so your interests will have to take a back seat to their’s.  And boy do they have a lot of them.  Frankly, it’s tough to know where to start.

So I guess we’ll progress along the scope of yesterday’s Dem spending spree.

Read on…

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

Talk about the economy and eyes can glaze over.  There are numbers and statistics and projections and data points and bar charts… it’s all very academic.  Except that it isn’t.  The Ivory Tower connects, this morning, with the human side of the Granholm - Cherry economy.

The faces of that economy?  A mom and a dad and their little girl, evicted for the first time in their lives after losing a job and struggling just to find a homeless shelter with an open bed.  And tragically, they’re hardly alone.

On Tuesday, people calling the Royal Oak offices of the South Oakland Shelter (SOS) were told there was one opening in the program, which has 30 beds in sites hosted by local congregations. Nine people, some trying to find space for their children and spouses as well, applied for it.

In September, shelter personnel fielded 848 requests for a space in the 90-day program; 31 got in. Nearly half of SOS’s clients are homeless for the first time, said Kevin Roach, executive director.

The strain on the shelter system spills onto all social services, hammered by falling fortunes in metro Detroit.

Gleaners Community Food Bank, which supplies 400 soup kitchens, shelters and neighborhood food programs is getting requests for 20% to 50% more food from many suburban clients, spokeswoman Anne Weekley said.

In the last three months of 2007, they delivered 7 million pounds of food. This year, in the final quarter, they anticipate delivering 9 million.

If you can read the story surrounding the statistics and look at the pictures of a little girl and an eleven year old boy and their families, forced into homeless shelters, without getting at least a little bit choked up, you aren’t looking hard enough.  

All of the abstracts sort of disappear when you put faces to the numbers.  This is one of the reasons each of us are involved in politics.  These kids are why we’re on blogs at unholy hours of the morning and night, why we argue with our friends and relatives, why we get so worked up come election time.  At the risk of stealing this week’s most popular cliché… “elections have consequences.”  

Read on…

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

Morning.  Are you awake?  Are you sitting down?  Are you ready to have an icy cold glass of water splashed in your face?  Ah, well, yes or no, here it comes…

Remember a few years back when there was this really successful business guy running for governor here in the state of Michigan on a platform of job creation and dramatic reforms in the way they do things in Lansing… and how the people of Michigan, in our infinite wisdom, decided Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry were handling the economy juuuust fine?  So much for that.

Michigan’s economy, ranked 49th or 50th in the United States, depending on the month, has been hemorrhaging jobs for the last six years but there’s nothing like a pink slip in your stocking at the holidays.  And we’re not just talking the auto industry here (although they’re back in the news AGAIN today with the third round of fresh job cuts in the last three days… we’ll get there…).

The Grand Rapids Press reports this morning that nearly 1,000 moms and dads in west Michigan are getting some awfully bad news this week.

Zeeland-based Herman Miller on Tuesday said it will cut 400 to 650 jobs through job cuts, layoffs and buyouts — mainly in West Michigan — through January.

Between 200 and 400 hourly workers could be laid off and about 250 white-collar jobs are to be eliminated. Herman Miller has about 4,500 employees in West Michigan.

Grand Rapids-based Steelcase, which employs about 4,700 workers in the area, was to send out announcements today to 300 hourly employees about possible layoffs within 60 days.

I can see the “holiday” card now.

Dear single mom of four,

We’re really sorry about that whole layoff thing during the holidays but you’ve got to understand, it’s hard work keeping Lansing’s budget this big and Big Labor happy.  

Look on the bright side.  Now you can spend more time with your kids during this magical season, and when those bigger utility bills come your way (you’re welcome, coincidentally) you now qualify for their financial assistance programs!

Don’t bother to thank us.  I’m on my way to DC to help the President-elect spread this sort of joy to the rest of the nation and when John Cherry runs for Governor next year he’ll insist he had nothing to do with this at all.

Tootles and Merry Christmas.

Your BFF,

Governor Granholm

Read on…

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

Barack Obama has been the President-elect for over six days now.  Heck, he’s even got an extra large majority ballooning in the House and the Senate as of last Tuesday’s elections.  His transition team is living and breathing and working out of the White House and he has Jennifer freaking Granholm and David Bonior on his economic advisory panel.  (Remember?  They did a press conference last week to tell us they were on the job?)

So why are things only getting worse?  Seriously, is this the “change we need?”  Sorry… said “change.”  Won’t happen again.  But c’mon now, we were promised that the oceans would recede and global warming would end, and if the snow on the ground yesterday morning was any indication, that’s a promise the Democrats already delivered on in spades.  

Now if they’d stop playing meteorologist and start playing economist it’d be much appreciated because checking the headlines in Michigan these days is like reading the obituaries.  Grab the paper, flip to, oh, the front page, and you can read about another dozen jobs dead here and another hundred there.  Like in Livonia, for instance, where the Detroit News tells us one of the State’s marketing giants just took a swift boot to the teeth.

Shares of Valassis Communications Inc. fell to a record low Monday, as the Livonia-based direct marketing firm cut 100 jobs and reduced its profit forecast after posting a third-quarter loss of $5.2 million last week.

Valassis also was removed from the Standard & Poors MidCap 400 index at the close of trading Monday, a move announced by S&P after the company’s market value dropped to $90 million late last week, putting it dead last in the ranking of 400 mid-sized firms.

Dead last sounds rotten but let’s not forget, this is a Livonia, Michigan based company.  They’re used to competing in a global economy from a position of weakness and economic stagnation.  Dead last is something we’re all too painfully familiar with here in the Granholm - Cherry economy.  But isn’t that why the President-elect nabbed our Governor for his fancy little economic team?

No, no, no, that’s right, she’s just there as a tip of the cap to the Big 3.  That’s the national Democrats’ way of telling the domestic automakers that things’ll be OK because the big government liberals are on the job.  Someone might want to give those silly manufacturers a wake up call though because if today’s headlines are any indication, General Motors didn’t get the message.  The Associated Press reports they’re announcing another couple thousand jobs are going the way of the internal combustion engine in Al Gore’s utopia.

Read on…

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

This is what we’re up against.

On Sunday morning, amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our President-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful church goers.

They did it with banners, chants, blasphemy, by storming the pulpit, by vandalizing the church facility, by potentially defiling the building with lude, public, sex acts and by intentionally forcing physical confrontations with worshipers.

This didn’t take place in some dystopian, post modern work of fiction and it didn’t take place in San Francisco or Berkley.  This was the scene at a Bible believing church in Lansing, Michigan.  

Read on…

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

You wanted it, Michigan, you got it.  It took approximately five days for us to learn the amount of the next tax hike Democrats are looking to impose on families already struggling to make ends meet here in the Great Lakes State and it could make the (appropriately) reviled Michigan Business Tax surcharge look like loose change.  Now that I think of it, maybe someone could toss a little loose change into a wishing well because it may well take a little supernatural intervention to stop a 65 member Dem majority in the House from doing whatever they want come January… and what they want, yeah, not so good if you’re a working mom or dad.

The Associated Press reports this morning on the late release of a report detailing the plans of bureaucrats and tax hikers to significantly increased spending on the state’s roads and infrastructure.  The report was due by October 31st, four days before the election, but the panel was stocked with members of the legislature who preferred their names not be associated with demands for giant increases the weekend before voters cast their ballots.

So just how much are we talking, now that they’re finally talking?  Try as much as $950 MILLION.  A year.

The report says Michigan must double its transportation spending and warns that one or two incremental fee increases won’t be enough to meet the need.

“To grow our state, just like anything else, you have to invest in something,” said Rep. Pam Byrnes, a Democrat from Lyndon Township near Chelsea who sits on the task force. “If your driveway crumbles, you need to patch it up or fix it.”

Representative Pam Byrnes, by the way, just won re-election in Michigan’s 52nd House District.  She and her big government compatriots rattled off a variety of tax hiking options that could radically increase the state’s take while dramatically shrinking the wallets and purses of parents across the state.  They might raise the tax on gasoline.  They might increase the sales tax on everything.  They might build toll booths on every freeway and exit ramp.  They might do all of the above.

Read on to find out more about the tax-hikers plans for your paycheck, an emerging employment sector talking Michiganders off the ledge (literally) and another Detroit Democrat who’ll make you yearn for inmate number 200834589.

Read More →

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

Barack Obama swept in a host of new Democrats in Michigan on Tuesday and here we are, two days later, and not only has no one walked on water, the local economic news just continues to get worse.

And the Governor’s reaction?  She’s heading to the Holy Land on a quixotic crusade to bring jobs back to Michigan.  The Lansing State Journal reports this morning that she’s on her way to Jordan and Jerusalem and guess what kind of jobs she’s targeting.

Michigan’s governor is heading to the Middle East to recruit high tech, homeland security and alternative energy businesses to the state.

Am I the only one scratching his head over the governor or Michigan’s decision to ask Jordanians for help with American homeland security?  Was the border to Syria blocked?  No one from the Iranian ministry of defense was willing to meet with her?  Hezbollah says they’re all about empowering the people, I’m sure they would have loved a one-on-one.

Alas, it’s only Jordan.  We’ll have to sit back with baited breath, hoping against hope that this taxpayer funded middle eastern vacation expedition produces more jobs than Granholm’s little jaunt earlier this year to Japan.  You remember that one… the trip that yielded ZERO new jobs and ZERO new job promises.  But I hear she brought back some really groovy souvenirs for everyone at MEDC.  So that’s something.

And while the Governor works on her tan, Michigan’s economy continue to crumble.  

One interesting question no one has asked, what have Michigan Democrats done to help the domestic auto industry?  Lots of criticism and clamor about the need to bailout the Big 3 but the Democrats have been in charge in Michigan for six years now.  What have they done?  Because whatever it is (or isn’t), it is clearly NOT working.  

Read on…

Read More →

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

Right Michigan readers are all pretty smart.  And you’re savvy.  You know how more about this particular campaign cycle than the average bear and the last thing you need to hear this morning is how important these last two days are.

That said, particularly here in Michigan, these last two days couldn’t possibly be more important.  

With the McCain pull out months back and the general pro-Dem feeling that most concede to be coursing through the broader electorate this year we’ve got our backs to the wall and the enemy is closing in fast.  

You’ve seen Aliens, right?  With Michael Beihn and Sigourney Weaver?  Remember the pinultimate battle, where Hicks stands on the desk and lifts the ceiling panel, discovering the horrifying truth that the cruel, evil, titular killing machines were only meters away and “inside the room?”  

The marines’ were trying to protect a little girl and their backs were against the wall.  If that wasn’t bad enough, they had a weasel, Carter Burke, sabotaging them from the inside, looking out for himself, running and all but cutting off their only fall-back option.  So what did they do?  They fought.  All hands were on deck (and on pulse rifles) and they made the enemy pay for every inch, minimizing their own losses and finding a way to survive.

Even Hudson, the iconic coward for most of the film, found his nerve, his voice and the trigger.

That’s us, kids.  In case you’ve missed the constant headlines, the enemy is closing in around us.  We aren’t just protecting Newt, but have instead an entire generation of Michiganders, born and unborn, counting on our grit and determination.  The bad guys are “inside the room” and the stakes couldn’t be higher.   Heck, our fall-back route has even been compromised from the inside.  The Associated Press reports:

“We haven’t heard anything from John McCain in weeks and Obama is still on the air,” said David Dulio, an Oakland University political scientist. “I think that turns into a Democratic advantage down the ballot…”

McCain’s campaign pulled out of Michigan more than a month ago, forcing the Michigan Republican Party and GOP candidates like Rep. Joe Knollenberg to find the manpower to make thousands of phone calls, distribute campaign fliers and overcome the doubters in a state where Democrats are favored.

Knollenberg, who has represented much of Oakland County for 16 years, and Rep. Tim Walberg, a freshman in a traditionally reliable GOP district in southern Michigan, are largely fending for themselves against voter unease over job losses, unhappiness with President Bush and concerns about a financial crisis.

So what’s an activist, a concerned friend, neighbor or parent or a conservative blog reader to do?  Grab those proverbial pulse rifles and make them pay for every inch.  Fight of our lives, because we’re all about to see exactly what uncontested and unchecked Democratic control of the legislative process can do to a state like Michigan.  The Dems in Lansing and even at the County level are gearing up for their favorite time of the year, the “lame duck,” and they couldn’t be readier to take more of your money.  

Read on…

Read More →

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

Even the most casual student of history now knows the story of King Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylae, thanks to 300, a pretty brilliant comic book and the film it inspired.  Three-hundred men, standing alone against the Persian horde, battling not just for life and limb but for a way of life and what was, then, the pinnacle of societal freedom.  

They were outnumbered a bajillion to one.  Fighting in the shade because the enemy arrows were so numerous they would, famously, blot out the sun.  One mission and one hope and one focus… strike where they could, hold while possible and buy as much time as they could manage.

History and legend remember those few men as heroes.  I wonder, sometimes, what our biographers might say should we one day warrant a re-telling.  Of course, the trick of that is, you’ve got to do something worth remembering.

We’re about four and a half days away from the close of the polls here in Michigan.  The Persian horde is closing in around us.  Polls are ugly.  There’s little doubt about our broader fate in many races nationally and even in some races here at home but there are still dozens of contests worth fighting for, tooth and nail.  Races and competitions where our collective input can shift the balance and make the difference.  Ultimately it’s a question of perspective.

We’ve all got two choices right now… stare into the belly of that dark, lumbering beast and despair or look inside ourselves and find the strength to fight on for another half a week.  

Somewhere in your neighborhood there’s a race that matters.  Maybe it’s  your state Rep race.  Get involved.  Maybe it’s a city council race.  Go door-to-door.  Maybe it’s a county clerk or a treasurer.  Make the difference.  Or, if you’re looking to play in the big leagues, there are four big races where your help this last weekend and a day could very well determine the outcome.

Read on for ways to get involved down the home stretch.

Read More →

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

Want to scare your neighbors this Halloween?  Dress your kid up like a pink slip or a foreclosure notice.  OK, sure, that might be in bad taste but it’d certainly be topical.

Besides, there’s good news, metro Detroiters!  The Associated Press just spoke with Patrick Anderson at the Anderson Economic Group and they’re revising the job-loss predictions that come along with what now appears to be an almost certain merger between General Motors and Chrysler.  

Reports initially claimed that 40,000 jobs were on the chopping block but new numbers say it’s only 35,000.  Factor in the world-famous union-backed Michigan “automobile job multiplier” and that’s nothing more than a piddly little 168,000 jobs lost.  Bah.  To steal a phrase from Gerard Butler, THIS.  IS.  MICHIGAN!

We lose hundreds of jobs every day.  Thousands every month.  Do the universe and all of her karmic forces really think 168,000 more Michigan jobs down the toilet will have any effect on us?  

Shoot, I’ll go ahead and make a bold prediction…

Read on…

Read More →

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

Detroit’s top Democrat is in the pokey.  Yesterday, former Mayor and convicted felon Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to serve 120 days in the Wayne County Jail.

Sort of puts a whole new spin on what his good friend Barack Obama had to say about him not too long ago.

Now, never let it be said that we’re not fair and balanced here at RightMichigan.com. In the spirit of accuracy, I figured I’d go ahead and provide a transcript of Senator Obama’s comments, updated to reflect today’s new circumstances and geography. Were he to deliver the same toast today, maybe during chow time, in with the general population, it’d actually read something like this.

I want to, uh, I want to first of all acknowledge your great resident of cell 14J-4, inmate number 200834589, who has been on the front lines (applause)… has been on the front lines, uh, doing an outstanding job of, uh, gathering together the leadership at every level in the Wayne County Jail to bring about the kind of renaissance that all of us anticipate for this great prison facility.

And, uh, he is a leader not just here in the Wayne County Jail, not just in the Michigan Department of Corrections but all across the country people look to him.  We know that he is going to be doing astounding things for 120 days to come.

I’m grateful to call him a friend and a colleague and I’m looking forward to, uh, a lengthy collaboration to make sure that the Wayne County Jail does well in the future.

Meanwhile, back at the courthouse, it looks like the Democrats in Detroit still don’t get it.  According to the Ivory Tower:

At the jail, officials took his new mug shot, showing him wearing standard-issue green inmate garb, not the sharp trademark attire he wore to court: dark blue suit, big-knot tie and crisp dress shirt still embroidered with the word “mayor” on the cuffs, even though he resigned in disgrace in September.

“We love you, mayor!” someone in his support group yelled as deputies escorted him out.
“Waitin’ for the comeback!” someone else shouted.

“Quiet please,” deputies retorted. “Quiet!”

Supporters filed 17 letters with (Judge David) Groner, asking the judge for leniency.

The pleas came from union leaders, pastors and businesspeople…

Interesting contrast with disgraced Republican Senator Ted Stevens up in Alaska. Stevens was convicted this week on a handful of felony counts himself.  The response from Republicans nationwide, including his colleague in the United States Senate, John McCain?  RESIGN NOW!  

No word on whether or not Alaskans “done set Stevens up for a comeback.”