A QUICK LANSING ROUNDUP

Budgets, Blue Cross/Blue Shield bills, Electric Utility Re-Organization, $40 billion benefits liability...

Read More

APOLOGIES AND RESTITUTION...

My sincere and most heartfelt apologies to the exemplary community of Bloomfield Hills, City. It has been brought to my attention that this web site was seriously and sorely deficient, to wit: it lacked a link to the City of Bloomfield Hills. 

NOW:  LET THE RECORD CLEARLY SHOW that a link to the City of Bloomfield Hills is now proudly featured on the much-coveted Right Side Border of this website.  Thanks to City Commissioner David Kellett for pointing out this unpardonable omission, and taking decisive and affirmative steps to rectify the situation.

DO-OVER DOO-DAH!

"It Aint Me, Babe!"

There seems to be some confusion about the Democratic Party primary do-over election, due to misinformation spread by some media and now the Governor's characteristic pass-the-buck finger pointed at "the legislature."

HERE'S THE DEAL:

1) The reason why there has been no vote, and no do-over, is that the Democrats in the legislature couldn't agree whether to hold one. The Clinton people, including our passionately pro-Hillary Governor, want to. The Obama people, quite sensibly, don't. Since the Democrats control the House, and the Speaker, according to Tim Skubic “leans Obama,” the majority Dems had no consensus, so nothing was brought to a vote.

2) The fact that the legislature is on break has nothing to do with it. We could have voted on a do-over, as we pumped out all the budgets. We could even go back and hold a special session to do so. I would be happy to return to Lansing and vote on such a measure. I would vote NO.

3) Many folks have voiced their opinion on the do-over. Let me make my position clear: I don't care what method the Democratic Party uses to select its Presidential nominee, up to and including a Ouija Board. However, I won't support using one more dime of public money to do so--including the labor of Clerks and their staffs, who, the last time I looked, did not work for free.

The taxpayers of Michigan --Dem, GOP, Indie, Green, Communist, Libertarian, Maoist, Pat Paulson, and any other viewpoint you can imagine-- gave both major parties an expensive gift: an 08 Presidential primary. I'm sorry the Dems screwed theirs up, but if I gave each of my daughters a car and one promptly drove hers into a wall, I wouldn't feel obligated to promptly replace it.
 

THE PRESS GETS IT!!

Oakland Press Joins the Reality Party!

Speaking of news…old fashioned, man-bites-dog news…here’s an earthquake! An old-line, MSM newspaper gets it right! THE OAKLAND PRESS Sunday, Oakland Forum (Editorial/Opinion Section) has “A Blueprint for Michigan Lawmakers.” Taking a ideas from Detroit Renaissance Inc. the PRESS lays out ten ideas as “ a common sense plan to repair state.”  See: http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/031608/opi_20080316426.shtml

            These proposals fall into our fundamental premise: reality-based budgeting, fiscal restraint, good stewardship of people’s money, government that lives within it’s means. It’s the antithesis of Granholm’s a-job-for-every-worker, a-pony-for-every-kid fantasyland. It’s what the reality party. stands for. Check out the specifics:

Oakland Press, March 16, 2008 . Section C 1.

• Among Detroit Renaissance proposals for reform in Michigan :
  -- State budget growth should be flat and no new programs should be added unless corresponding offsets are found and/or revenues increase as a result of real economic growth.
•     -- Legislative leaders and the governor should change their revenue forecasting procedures to project revenues over at least a two-year period, increase the frequency of reviewing projections and include an external panel of economic experts to affirm the projections to achieve the most accurate and timely identification of upcoming fiscal conditions.
• -- State government should invest its limited capital resources in economic stimulus projects that will promote the state's overall competitiveness.
• -- Eliminate binding arbitration for municipal police and fire employee contracts.
• -- Eliminate barriers to consolidation for municipal governments.
• -- Require public schools to provide non-instructional services (i.e. food service, busing, maintenance, etc.) in the most cost-effective manner, including potentially outsourcing these services.
• -- Consolidate purchasing to take advantage of economies of scale.
• -- Bring Medicaid spending in line with other states.
• -- Focus on making the total cost of doing business in Michigan competitive with states we most frequently compete with for jobs, including Midwest and Southern states.
• -- Make those responsible for administering regulatory programs help business comply with these standards as part of their responsibility.
• -- Aggressively seek to increase federal resources coming back to Michigan .

  What’s not to like?

THE CRASH IS HERE

            Got your spare $4000? That’s what you owe...actually, it’s a little more: $4,024.77. That’s everybody reading this, and everybody who isn’t; every man, woman, and child in the state, from the newborn baby to the oldest senior. You owe it. I owe it.

            How so? That’s the unfunded liability bill for retiree health care—the price tag on what Michigan has promised to our government retirees, from teachers to judges to the guy who mows the lawn. The figure is about $40 billion. Yep, you heard right! Forty B-for-Baby-Billion dollars. Take that figure, divide it by Michigan ’s population: 9,938,444. What you get is $4024.77 per person. Mind you, this isn’t all we owe. Our pension funds are about 82% funded. But we’ll stick with $4K for now. Got your checkbook?

            Meanwhile, the state’s revenue estimates have softened. The Senate Fiscal Agency warned of a possible $134 million decline in anticipated revenues for the current budget and a reduction of $249.6 million in next year's budget, which will go into effect on Oct. 1. That’s a quarter of a billion buck shortfall in less than a year.

             It’s time to face the cold and relentless logic of numbers. There isn’t enough money for all the Yes! Cool! Forward! Michigan ! plans being touted. The expansion of Michigan government is over. We’re out of cash. It doesn’t matter how really, really cool  these programs are, there just isn’t enough money. Let me repeat:

            THERE ISN’T GOING TO BE ENOUGH MONEY!!

            The iron imperative of the bottom line now requires that Michigan government start to face the same facts families and businesses have for years. Big Lansing is out of gas. All-day Kindergarten, Universal Pre-School , rounding up 17 and 18 year olds and marching them to the schoolhouse for $200 million worth of programs, may be wonderful initiatives, but when the basic foundation allowance can’t keep up with inflation, and our state Appeals Courts can’t administer timely justice because it lacks essential personnel, it’s obvious some fiscal triage will be needed. Lansing will have to start retrenching, backpedal on grandiose promises like “a job for every worker,” and prioritize what basic fundamental services government must provide.

This is it, folks. The crash of Jennifer Granholm's Spend-ocracy is at hand. Stay tuned.

A MODEST PLATFORM

Everybody's trying to come up with the best, most focus-tested platform for the upcoming elections. Me, I like to keep things simple. How about this:

Cut the taxes.

Control the spending.

Balance the Budget

Stop driving away jobs.

"What about specifics?" you say. Fine. Here are three concrete actions:

1) The Personal Income Tax hike last year was bad: roll it back.

2) The "Michigan Business Tax " replacement for the SBT was a job-killer. Roll it back.

3) State spending is still out of control: cap it and cut it.

MICHIGAN NEEDS AN OVERHAUL!

Let's pull out of the ditch, fix 'er up and get 'er back on the road.

What do you think??

FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING!!!!

http://cbs2chicago.com/national/midwest.cold.snap.2.636835.html

Looks like we're winning the war on Global Warming.

Now if we can just deal with the Ice Age...

THIS IS TROUBLING...

http://www.lostinspacerobot.com/index.html

I've seen enough movies to know that no good ever comes of this sort of thing. 

Just remember Moss' First Rule of Robotics: NEVER, EVER give the robots emotions.

THE DETROIT NEWS GETS IT RIGHT

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080122/OPINION01/801220311/1007/OPINION

Good advice for coping with the housing value fall-back after the end of the bubble. 

Housing price run-ups were a classic bubble, like tulip bulbs, tech stocks, and Beanie Babies. Due to low interest rates, plus some loosey-goosey lending practices  a textbook speculative ("Flip This House") bubble got going. What goes up, must come down. There's a million ways to make a bubble-burst a worse problem than it is, and bailouts are one of the main ones. Another is to fix a convenient scapegoat, like "predatory lenders" as villainous devils, and clog up the capital markets with punitive regulation. Yet another is to compound the Byzantine, Rube Goldberg structure of Headlee-Prop A Michigan tax policy with populist, pandering short-term giveaways that further erode local governments' ability to deliver services.

ROOKIE LEAGUE

I get letters. Emails, phone calls, (see contact info above!) As the budget crisis heats up, I've gotten a ton of them, all asking "why don't you just get it together?" "Why can't you solve the problem?" "Quit your partisan ideology and just fix the problem!" "Why can't you just fix it like we do at my job?"

Great questions. And today the answer hit me: because nobody knows what the heck they're doing. 

Read More...

BUDGET CRISIS

Public finance is simple to understand. You draw a vertical line, put a plus on one side, and a minus on the other. The plus side is "revenue" the minus is spending.

Read More...

  I'm With Chuck!!  

Home