Once more unto the aggregator: Links fo yo' Friday

by: Eric B.

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 14:54:28 PM EST

Fish, turkey, chicken, hog, beef, venison, caribou and not wild boar: Those are the eight different kinds of animal flesh, as of about noon today, that currently are stored in my freezer. The boar came courtesy my old boss at the newspaper, who got it from a friend of his who shot it at the local game ranch. I've bellyached about those things before, about how they help add to the problem of a nuisance non-native species and especially those down and around Jackson County that people think maybe escaped from the game ranch of Michigan's most famous overgrown adolescent (that is, before he fled the "Socialism" of Jennifer Granholm for Crawford, Texas), but now that it's dead and processed into breakfast sausage form, it would be a crime to let it go uneaten. Word on the street is that I might be able to lay my hands on some black bear, and if that comes to pass it'll be a mighty special day. By the way, for the record, there's a coop in Traverse City called Oryana that makes -- or used to make -- its own tofu right on site. If you ever get a chance, get some, because that tofu is the shit (and by "the shit" what I mean is really, really, really, really good).

Onward!

*--By now, you're aware that Indiana -- glorious Indiana, where every economic metric is worse than it is in Michigan -- passed Right to Work legislation. The Mackinac Center feels this is great, because Michigan ought to be a lot more like Indiana (that is, a place worthy of living in only if you're already wealthy). Thankfully, benevolent overlord Rick Michigan isn't so hot on Right to Work. Right to Work's chief legislative champion Mike Shirkey, by the way, committed a few campaign finance violations, which he categorized as "rookie mistakes." We're all capable of committing rookie mistakes, but would you want someone who is so wet behind the ears that they do to be responsible for engineering such important public policy? Right, chalk this up to a perpetually rookie Legislature tinkering with things its members don't understand and, as noted previously, over the objections of the business community the tinkering is intended to help.

*--Welfare reform was much more successful in throwing people off public assistance than anyone imagined. By the way, no one has any idea if the people thus tossed are finding ways to make ends meet ... say following Ken Horn's suggestion that the involved male's "man up" and "swing a hammer." And, of course, the working poor were hit 1,000 harder by last year's tax reforms than were people capable of absorbing the hit. How do you define shared sacrifice? The working poor complain about being routinely screwed, and benevolent overlord Rick Michigan has to get bored to tears listening.

*--L. Brooks Patterson is a crybaby because Democrats are FOIAing documents associated with his Oakland County power grab.

*--Brenda Lawrence made it a three-way race in announcing her bid for the 14th District this week, making it the race most of us will watch most closely this upcoming primary season. I realize there are four candidates. There are only three that are very interesting to me. Mary Waters has spoiler potential, maybe.

*--The stupidity of centrism via Chad Selweski. Jack Brandenberg wants to continue to restrict the amount of revenue state government can collect. What will result? More budget cuts, and probably to education. That means more cuts in funding for the state's university system, which will force universities to once again look to students to make ends meet (i.e. pay faculty who are already underpaid compared to private sector counterparts). They will raise tuition, further shifting the burden of costs onto individual students and hiking up student debt. If you listen to the priests of High Broderism, the problem here is that universities won't meet legislators who exist in an absolute fantasy world halfway by making cuts that will water down the value of the university system.

*--Magic Frank bumbles through an entire column attacking Jennifer Granholm's new Tee Vee show on a network most of us will never see.

*--Without taking sides in the 14th District primary, I note that Gary Peters attempted to get on record what anyone with a shred of sense already knows ... the Bush tax cuts, coming in the middle of two wars, ballooned out the deficit.

*--Peter Hoekstra is as unoriginal as he is bland.

*--From Detroit, and its budget struggles.

*--This is really sad: Jack Hoogendyk lugs around CFLs to beat up Fred Upton, while light bulb manufacturers complain that they've already invested lots of money in meeting the new federal standards they helped craft.