While Republicans appear to be running rampant with burning torches and pitchforks chanting "Slash and Burn!" through the state's budget, it might be worth their while to pay careful attention to a recent poll released last week.
Cut early childhood development and education funding and consider yourself on the chopping block.
From Monday's subscription-only MIRS-
Three-quarters of voters say it is personally important to them to protect early childhood development and education from funding cuts, with 44 percent saying it is extremely important to them and 31 percent saying very important. At least six out of 10 voters across demographic and political subgroups say it is extremely or very important to protect early childhood development and education from funding cuts.
A majority of voters say they would cast their vote depending on a candidate's position on this issue. Fifty-four percent of voters say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who came out in favor of maintaining funding for early childhood development and education, 31 percent were much more likely; 10 percent less likely; 32 percent no difference. Additionally, 54 percent of voters say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who came out in favor of reducing funding for early childhood development and education, 38 percent were much less likely, 15 percent more likely and 26 percent no difference.
Of course this comes on the heels of last week's axing of the Michigan Promise Grant by the Senate Republicans, but only a handful of the caucus are facing re-election. The rest are termed out, allowing them to show their true colors, i.e. kids be damned, or something to that effect.
So while they keep the slash and burn mentality, the rest of us are left repeatedly hearing news like this alternative high school that's being forced to close, providing a much-needed second chance for teens.
The Legislature is out for the summer recess, but between this poll and the findings of the Cherry Report in '04, you'd think that sooner or later that the Republicans would wise up when it comes to cutting off funding for education. That is, if they ever hope to gain power or seats again.
This Jack Lessenberry column is something you should have already read. If you haven't, please go read it before going on. You will take a short quiz at the end of this post.
I’m not sure what the weather is where you are. But it is a bleak day for thousands of Michigan adults who have been managing their vision, hearing and dental problems with the help of Medicaid.
Due to our budget problems, the state, as of today, is no longer paying for a number of formerly covered services. This includes routine eye and dental exams, glasses and fillings.
That's actually as of July 1. I noticed the deadline, mostly because I work in a group home in a system of group homes where all of the residents are entirely dependent on Medicaid.
One of the residents in that system (when you work in such a thing, you tend to get to know residents in a number of the homes), was rushing up against the July 1 deadline to get fitted for dentures. There was real danger that the dentures might not be ready by July 1 and this person would spend the rest of his or her life without anything in his mouth, and not by any choice or his or her own.
Unless you've been living under a very large rock, you probably noticed a couple months ago when a million a few thousand rabid conservatives gathered around the country for a "tea party" to protest...well...something. The decline of Americathe obviously impending socialism Obama's race...I think. Anyway, tomorrow they're planning on doing it again. I can't speak for anyone else, but I was mystified and mortified when they took several million perfectly good tea bags and destroyed them. This time 'round we're prepared for their insanity and it's time we fight back in a constructive way.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Million Can March. The premise is simple: liberal bloggers are collecting non-perishable food items to donate to local food pantries with a goal of donating one million cans of food by tomorrow, July 4. It's our way of responding positively to the teabaggers' insanity and leveraging the power of community to do something helpful rather than something destructive. After all, if you're going to post blog entries all over creation and gather people together, they might as well be doing something constructive, right?
I don't need to tell you that Michigan's food pantries are in bad shape. Given the smoking crater that used to be Michigan's economy, the need for food aid is rising astronomically and there just aren't enough people who are in a position to help by donating. Now, more than ever, these food banks need help from people who have the means to help.
Some Tips:
Give nonperishable food items. Canned meat, peanut butter, jelly, canned fruits and vegetables, soup, canned pasta dishes (ravioli, spaghetti, etc.), pasta, pasta sauce, boxed potato and rice mixes, boxed pancake/baking mixes, etc.
Some pantries also accept and are in need of baby formula and baby food.
Some pantries also accept and are in need of personal care items: toothpaste, toothbrushes, toilet paper, shampoo, etc.
Please do not give away expired or old food. If you wouldn't eat it, what makes you think someone else will?
I'm sure your pickled herring is lovely, but please re-gift it to Uncle Joe instead. Consider kid-friendly foods.
The debate is supposed to be about combating climate change. But when the Senate takes up energy and climate legislation this summer, another word will be in the forefront: jobs.
Nationwide, and particularly for Michigan, the issue of economic impact is likely to determine support for legislation to limit emissions of carbon and other gases that cause rising global temperatures. After a bruising battle in the House yielded narrow passage of a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions, attention now turns to a handful of key senators -- including both of Michigan's -- who could determine the fate of a key goal of the Obama administration.
This framing is a guaranteed defeat for cap-and-trade. You can ignore the sober, real analysis that says this will have little impact on the economy. Unfortunately, environmental programs are always fought on the flawed idea that they destroy jobs. This has never been the case, but the idea has persisted nonetheless and the assumption is that it is true, which means fighting global warming in terms of job losses is going to guarantee in the bill not getting proper support.
This is especially the case with loud and angry and scientifically illiterate Libertarians and conservatives gathering this weekend, with one eye on cap-and-trade.
The debate should be about the future, that is building a sustainable future. The debate should focus on how to avoid climate catastrophe, with a sober eye on the necessary costs in doing that. The costs, shouted incoherently from the Right, are unfortunately hogging the debate.
The car companies have reported their sales figures for June. While the declines themselves are bad enough, even more telling is this headline: "11.3% decline is Ford's best performance this year."
Remember Cliff Taylor's car, which the then-Chief Justice used for personal functions at taxpayer expense? Well, now it's reached a milestone: 100,000 miles driven. Says MDP Chair Mark Brewer:
“The car initially swerved to the right constantly, but after Diane Hathaway defeated Taylor, the car has steered a more middle of the road path just like the Supreme Court,” observed Brewer.
Now tha Franken's been seated, it's time for Harry Reid to start pretending that Dems need 67 votes to pass anything.
The Pure Michigan ad campaign has been ranked by Forbes as one of the best tourism campaigns of all time.
If you are able to, please help your local food bank with some donations. Mel Trotter in Grand Rapids is one of many that are dealing with shortages.
Well, it's only a matter of time before the Alan Carlin controversy shows up someplace in the pages of the Detroit News, or one of the intellectual dishrags in the state's conservative blogging community starts waving his or her arms around and a-hootin' and a-hollerin' about the EPA crushing conservative viewpoints. Considering that Debbie Stabenow and/or Carl Levin could be key votes to getting a cap-and-trade through Congress, we should probably get out ahead of it.
To sum up ... an EPA economist named Alan Carlin submitted an unsolicited report trying to cast doubt on the scientific consensus of global warming as the so-called Endangerment draft were circulating. The Endangerment study is expected to be the precursor to the EPA taking up the authority granted to it by the U.S. Supreme Court to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Anyway, the EPA -- or rather, people at the EPA responsible for putting the thing together -- looked at the unsolicited report that Carlin wrote on his own time, and opted not to include it in the final comments. Then, Carlin was sent a few e-mails expressing as much and also advising him to do the job he was hired in 1971 to do, which is offer economic analysis ... not vet climate science.
Since then, the Competitive Enterprise Institute -- a rightwing think tank that has over the years gotten a substantial amount of money from fossil fuel companies -- got ahold of the e-mails and has been calling it a case of the EPA quashing science that didn't fit into presupposed conclusions.
"If we start talking about freedom and personal control and personal opportunities to express opinions and choices, Republicans can be on the pathway to the same kind of success in 2010 that we enjoyed in 1994," Hoekstra said Tuesday.
I, for one, think it's going to be awfully difficult for Republicans to come across as credible preaching about personal responsibility any time soon (this is too good not to share: "Sanford has also given birth to a new euphemism for adultery — 'hiking the Appalachian trail' — the governor’s original explanation for his absence."). But, you know what would be nice? Someone who campaigns on the need for people to take responsibility for the common good rather than focusing on selfish motivations.
Who is Kenneth W. Chilton? Some guy from Missouri. So, why did the Detroit News give him space on its Op-Ed page? I think we have the answer here.
For the past two years, Congress has been considering legislation to address global warming. The latest version, the Waxman-Markey climate bill, has been approved by the House and seems dangerously close to being enacted into law. For American families struggling to keep their heads above water, the cure will be worse than the disease.
This push to impose what is, in essence, an energy tax is out-of-step with the views of the American people. Congress appears to be convinced that predictions from computer models of high levels of global warming 50 to 100 years in the future are unquestionably accurate. But the latest Gallup poll on global warming finds that 41 percent of Americans now believe that global warming is "generally exaggerated." Thirty 30 percent said they thought that future warming was exaggerated as recently as 2006.
In other words, the News went out and found someone not because they could bring unique and informed perspectives to the table, but because they push an agenda the News has been pushing for years. Note the quality of argumentation ... why model future global temperatures when such things are apparently subject to the rigors of Gallup polls? He also cherry picks economic impact data, which is to say that he skips data from real reliable sources that predict a very modest impact on most families from Waxman-Markey, and goes straight to the Heritage Foundation, which doesn't think global warming is a problem to begin with.
In a confidential March memo, Gage writes that when center voters are asked to pick a word to describe the GOP "religious right is the dominate term as to why the center does not like the Republican Party.
And there's more as he waxes on, "It is the left's successful vilification of the term "religious right" to imply intolerance and ignorance that is handicapping Republicans' ability to reach voters in the center."
The problem isn't just that the Religious Right has hijacked the Republican brand. It's also that GOP strategists apparently think that the image issue for the Religious Right is a matter of successful framing by "the left." Could it be that when representatives of the Religious Right say things like:
According to (Gary) Glenn, an Oxford University study suggests that college-aged gay men will die eight to 20 years earlier than straight men, and that gay people are more likely to experience domestic violence, a life-threatening disease and premature death.
that people tend to develop negative impressions of that person as not only intolerant of others, but also the movement they represent? I mean, that is nothing more than a modernized version of the belief that there is scientific evidence that African Americans have smaller brains, and are thus not as intelligent as white people. The Left hasn't villified these people, they've villified themselves; and the GOP has no one to blame but itself for tying its fortunes to those who so eagerly say stupid things in public.
By the way, this is the same Gary Glenn who is planning a referendum drive to repeal Kalamazoo's new anti-discrimination ordinance. I certainly hope he's successful in getting the requisite number of signatures for a November vote. What the GOP really needs right now is months and months of this guy in the headlines, flapping his gums on behalf of the Religious Right about how homosexuals are the gravest threat to marriage since Henry VIII formed the Church of England as part of his a vain effort to sire a son.
In an e-mail subjected "*****SPAM*****", Paul Welday shouts the following:
“The Cap and Trade bill just passed in the House will have as significant a negative impact on Oakland County as anything Washington has ever forced down our throats,” said Welday. “In a time when Michigan ’s unemployment rate is over 14 percent and climbing, Gary Peters just voted to wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs. This bill dramatically raises taxes on every working family and increases costs on virtually everything we purchase. And Peters vote did nothing to expand our nation’s need for energy independence. He owes it to the voters of the 9th District to stand before his constituents during this 4th of July recess and explain how he can possibly justify the unjustifiable.”
That's ... hundreds ... of thousands of jobs that Gary Peters has now killed by voting for a bill that ... dramatically ... raises taxes. By the way, getting back to that Krugman column from yesterday:
Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
This also is true. The Right, which still doesn't think climate change is a problem, keeps screaming that the cap-and-trade bill -- despite having support from such a wide swath of industry that some environmentalists think that a con job has been pulled on Congress -- will destroy jobs. And, as they go with the hard, natural science...
Gladwin, Mich. -- The military says a 28-year-old soldier from Michigan has died in Iraq.
The Department of Defense said Tuesday that Sgt. Timothy A. David of Gladwin died Sunday in Baghdad of wounds suffered earlier in Sadr City, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
David is the 170th serviceman with known Michigan ties to have died in the war in Iraq.
It will prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people when it comes to hiring, housing and other accommodations. The ordinance goes into effect in July.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!! THEY ARE OUT TO GET US AND DESTROY OUR WAY OF LIFE! NOW MY PARENTS' MARRIAGE OF 35 YEARS IS IN JEOPARDY BECAUSE MEMBERS OF THE K'ZOO COMMISSION HAVE DECIDED TO PUSH THE BALL FORWARD ON EQUALITY RATHER THAN DOING THE RIGHT THING AND CHEATING ON THEIR SPOUSES!!!
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
Those are the last two paragraphs. All the ones leading up to it are likewise worth reading. It's a reminder, among other things, why Vern Ehlers' "no" vote was such a disappointment. Unlike most of his Republican colleagues, Ehlers isn't just some run-of-the-mill denialist. Based on things he's said, he actually believes this is a serious problem.
We've heard a lot of whining over the last few months that the "cost" of coming climate change legislation will kill jobs, destroy industry, kick puppy dogs, sicken orphans ... basically the same old barge filled with scary warnings that have been used since time immemorial about every major piece of environmental legislation (if history is any judge of the efficacy of these warnings, we could pass new climate change bills from today until the end of time and not destroy the economy). Still, as climate change moves from the House to the Senate, it's worth taking a look at what impact the bill might actually have on internal Michigan deliberations about energy. Here's what Consumers had to say about the climate bill in a good blog post about Mark Schauer's support for it in the Jackson Citizen Patriot.
Jackson-based Consumers Energy praised Schauer for modifying provisions to the bill that will have a favorable impact on customers as we move toward high-efficiency lighting, but declined to comment on whether the utility supports the actual bill as a whole.
"Consumers Energy praises Congressman Mark Schauer for his actions to make significant improvements to the lighting efficiency standards section of this legislation," Consumers spokesman Dan Bishop said in a statement. "We look forward to ongoing deliberation and debate on this legislation in the U.S. Senate. We will continue to work with Michigan's Senators on further modifications to balance the goal of reducing greenhouse gases with the cost of that effort. We will continue to vigorously participate in discussions and advocate on behalf of our 1.8 million electric customers."
In the least shocking news of the day, Monica Conyers has resigned as Detroit City Council President Pro Tem effective July 6, 2009. In an interesting note, her resignation letter indicates that her staff will continue to be employed through December 31, 2009.
Convicted Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers has resigned.
The Detroit City Clerk’s Office said it received a resignation letter today from Conyers with a resignation date effective July 6.
Conyers pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy charges and was convicted on Friday in federal court. Rumors swirled over the weekend that she wasn't going to resign. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Cox (R-I'm Like Mike... Rogers!) immediately issued a slew of paper, proclaiming that he wouldn't stand for such an "infamous crime". Apparently adultery isn't considered "infamous" in Lansing anymore.
Anyone else sick to death of pulic officials thinking that morals and ethics are suitable only for stump speeches? I swear, I'm going to smack the next person who claims to have found Jesus immediately after hiking the Appalachian Trial while jetting off to Argentina to boink his mistress. Corruption happens on both sides of the aisle - this isn't a D or an R issue.
