Chuck Moss

CHUCK MOSS

^{State
Representative 40th District}

Toll-Free 877-707-MOSS

^{CONTACT
ME! STATE OF MICHIGAN
EYE ON OAKLAND}

I'm With Chuck!!

COLUMNS

Merry Pranksters Welcome

Tax Relief: Whose Money?

How the Crisis Came

WE BUILT THIS

Go Hollywood!

You Gotta Be Kidding!!!

We Need A Reality Party!

Wiener dog BLOG

Politics, Media, Satire, and Dachshunds.

Why There Are Tea Parties:

Federal Deficits:

You know what they say about how to boil a frog...

Well, Obama's turned the dial up and the frog's starting to kick.

THE RULES:

1) There are no Democrat numbers or Republican numbers, only the factual bottom line.

2) Reality is. You can face it or you can evade it, but it’s still going be there—no matter how many people you may convince differently.

3) You can’t spend more than you take in forever. Deficits can be covered by spending savings, by borrowing, or by putting off creditors. Sooner or later the bills must be paid.

4) Money comes from somewhere. Governments can tax it, borrow it, or print it out of thin air. Each way has costs. Devaluing currency costs least in the short run, most in the medium and long.

5) SUPPLY = DEMAND balanced by PRICE is an economic law, no less immutable than the law of gravity, and just as dangerous to ignore. SUPPLY = DEMAND balanced by PRICE is an economic law, no less immutable than the law of gravity, and just as dangerous to ignore.

6) An economy is an ecosystem, not a machine. It’s dynamic, ruled by the Law of Unintended Consequences, easy to mess up, tough to re-balance, and the best thing is often just to leave it alone and let it heal itself.

7) Capital is mobile. Human capital is the most valuable capital of all.

8) When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains. But Peter gets the last word.

When You Rob Peter to Pay Paul, Paul Never Objects.

What happens if Peter gets sick and tired of doing the paying?

Dogblogging: The Wild GingerDog .

Collapsed from exhaustion--from the rigors of her latest adventure.

Best Blog Mention: Trenchant comment from the Trenches.

Rob Lawrence, Birmingham Public Schools Board,

"Schools, Politics, and Common Sense"

Check It Out!!

The Merry Pranksters Welcome the Beatles;

The House Republicans Welcome the Governor!

Read More...

Video Alert!!!

Response to the January Revenue Estimate Conference here on YouTube.

Not a bad performance, but will improve when I get entire use of face left side back. I came down with Bell's Palsy six weeks ago, and am about 95% recovered. Last bit to return on-line seems to be upper lip-to-cheekbone muscle. Still the facts, as they say, speak for themselves.

The Granholm Administration!

Photo: via Freep

"Windmills Are Green."

MSM DEATHWATCH

The ~~Coming~~ Current Collapse . *

"Good News: We elected Obama. Bad News: We're out of business."

* The Oakland Press and ~~Birmingham Eccentric~~ not included.

What a Bizarre Concept:

Let Detroit Build Cars That Make Money!!!!

Separated At Birth?

Just remember, it's a thin line between FDR:

And the Penguin:

BLUE JOURNALISM. *

* The Oakland Press and ~~Birmingham Eccentric~~ not included.

LET'S SPREAD THE FAME AROUND!

Take Madonna. She’s been famous for, what? At least 25 years. Now let’s do some math: 876,576 people could have had 15 minutes of fame except Madonna took it all!

Read More...

State Retiree Health Care Obligations: The Silent Killer.

Did you know you owe $5,000? Last year’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) showed the amount Lansing owes for Unfunded Retiree Health Care obligations: $40 billion.

That’s right: Forty. Billion. Dollars.

Read more:

GONE HOLLYWOOD!!!

Options, baby!! It's official: I'm now a video "star." A couple of months ago--May 12th, I wrote an op ed for the DETROIT NEWS, with the following novel idea: if Michigan wants to tax business to death with the Michigan Business Tax & surcharge, yet is happy to offer tax breaks to filmmakers, why not just become a filmmaker! You can read the column here.

So the folks at the Michigan Chamber were so taken with the idea, that they made a video out of it, and asked me to narrate. Who could say no to that? So here's a link to the video at the NEWS http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=2378

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 DETROIT NEWS GETS IT RIGHT

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.

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.