| Nolan Finley gives some space to the state's most pressed-upon public official, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop. Specifically, he says that Jennifer Granholm has picked on the poor dear. Give Bishop the last word, since he's been so meanly treated by the governor in recent weeks: "What she's doing is calculated, shameless and reckless." Well said.
Bishop has been playing the victim card since the governor essentially told him to either fund schools or let massive cuts stand, claiming that she's being unfair in telling him that if education is really a priority to him that he'd find ways to fund it. Naturally, he hasn't done such a thing, because schools are a lower priority for the Senate Republicans than is not raising taxes. After all, Bishop is still holding out hopes that some day he'll be allowed to run for statewide office, which will be a dead dream in the current GOP if he allows another vote that raises taxes. Finley says that the real act of villainy here is that Granholm overlooks the Dillon Plan, the plan to lump all public employee health insurance under a single, state-run plan that the latest polls show as being rejected by both Republicans and Democrats alike. Naturally, to Finley, this is all the fault of the MEA. The fact that the savings offered up by it are highly questionable, and the fact that we wouldn't see them materialize for long years is not of consequence to him. What is important is that the governor is a jerk and the MEA is bankrupting this state right this very second. Well, then, let us suppose that the governor stop acting like such a mean jerk, and let us suppose that the governor opened herself up to government reform (her proposed tax on services itself is government reform, focused on the income side rather than the service providing, but the fact that this is as badly needed as reforming how government provides services is conveniently overlooked). Well, we did hear last week or something that Mike Bishop and his band of merry men in the state Senate were going to roll out reforms of local government and school consolidations (which to people who managed to get their budgets fully completed by their appointed deadlines might seem somewhat dubious). Today, crickets. Tomorrow, expect more of the same. The state Senate, it seems, really has other priorities. |
