Shill another day...

by: Eric B.

Sun Jan 23, 2011 at 10:23:19 AM EST

Let's return to the issue of item pricing with a simple question ... in years past, we were told that we couldn't adopt a public smoking ban at this time because it might ultimately cost some people their jobs. Where are those people with that same argument right now. Oh yes, those are mostly people who weren't against the smoking ban because they particularly cared about jobs. They just didn't want to be told that they could no longer smoke in  public.

Interesting item to follow up on Frank Kelley's new turnaround on item pricing. What would be the most effective way to turn the argument around? Get the guy who for years was the most defiant opponent of repealing item pricing and get him to come out in favor of it. Such things always generate headlines, accompanied by shakes of the head and, "Well, if Frank Kelley is finally in favor of this..." There might be good reasons why Frank Kelley is now in favor of repealing. And, those good reasons might have more to do with Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Franklin than technology advances. From a different angle.

Lobbying behind the scenes is one thing, but Frank Kelley put his good name behind this in a very public way. I'm not saying that his conversion is mostly based on being paid, but this is a lot like Bob Barker coming out strongly in opposition to spaying and neutering after being seen taking a burlap sack with a dollar sign on the side of it from a notorious dog fighting ring operator.

Update! ... Der Skubenfuhrer this morning.

The new governor has reopened a can of worms that has been on the shelf, if you'll pardon the pun, since 1970.

The grocery folks never liked it it in the first place when then Attorney General Frank Kelley pushed the law.  It forced them to put a price on each and every item in the store.

...snip...

Ole Frank loved it. Let's just say the local supermarket folks did not when they were caught red handed.

He then goes on to point out that he's now against that which provided him with so much political hay, back in the day. Skubick, to his credit, doesn't fall for the obvious, cheesy "Nixon goes to China" element to this, and adds the flip-flop stuff below the reality that this will very probably become law with or without Kelley's support.

The question I have is why the state's media -- and this got play in the straight news sections -- continues to let such obvious apparently conflict of interests (the Wal-Mart lobbying connection, and reports that Wal-Mart has been lobbying Rick Michigan to do away with this with all the vigor of a hummingbird on speed) to go not only unexplored, but entirely unmentioned?

Update 2 (the it's late, but I'm up late and half-drunk edition) ... How did no one see this coming? Booggerman* presses the "Well, if Frank Kelley endorses it, maybe it's not such a bad thing" argument.

*--A few years ago, Ron Dzwonkowski wrote a column where he said that if you swapped one letter, you could turn blogger into boogger, except that he was looking for a word with one less "g." I know, it's petty to keep bringing it up. It was, like, years ago. The problem is that it's my experience that this breed very rarely learns its lessons and mostly just -- in the face of criticism -- operates below the radar.