| I skipped last night's State of the State. Okay, that's not really fair. I missed it because I had a meeting. Okay, that's not really fair. I could have skipped the meeting and watched the speech. Ultimately, it came down to the path of least pain, which involved missing the State of the State to attend the meeting that I was earlier in the week tasked with chairing. By the time I got home, it seems that everyone already had formed an opinion of the speech. In fact, most people had already formed an opinion before benevolent overlord Rick Michigan delivered the thing. So, it frankly didn't seem like an environment worth adding to. For what it's worth, here is Gretchen Whitmer's rebuttal, which appears to be predicated on the idea that benevolent overlord Rick Michigan did what he always does, which is offer meaningless platitudes but only vague details. This is a speech, mind you, that is always high on vague details and meaningless platitudes through administrations. Fer'nstance. Lansing— Michigan is "getting it right and getting it done," Gov. Rick Snyder pronounced in a State of the State address Wednesday that included no surprises or bold new initiatives.
A couple of years ago, a panel of old, white men expressed sadness that Jennifer Granholm didn't include in her State of the State address tax hike proposals everyone knew were going to be part of the conversation, and instead waited to spring those on an "unsuspecting" Lansing for her budget proposal. Last year, everyone was agog over dashboards. Meanwhile, Skubick notes that benevolent overlord's vague, unsurprising speech failed to mollify the concerns of Detroit, where residents are concerned that a financial emergency might be used as an excuse to send in a dictator. Someone else last night noted that the speech made no references whatsoever to pulling local communities out of a quagmire of declining property values and years of broken promises. It's a fair cop, but an understandable one. As noted, these speeches are intended for the digestion of the state as a whole, but those people who live and work within the Lansing bubble. |
