Hump Day links

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 25, 2012 at 16:49:45 PM EST

I get one night a week to cook for myself, and that night is Wednesday. Oh, there is the occasional meeting that screws that up and which also requires a good stiff drink or two to make it through (I don't normally drink alcohol to cope, but these are especially painful meetings). On the menu for tonight? Pork vindaloo, or something like it. This is the year that I make an effort to learn how to cook Indian.

Onward!

*--Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's opposition to Right to Work has been "out there" for a few days, and was well documented even last year. I realize some people parsed his opposition, demanding that he vow to veto Right to Work legislation if it hit his desk, and in the absence of that calling him a supporter of it. Last year, he shut it down in the Legislature before it could take form, as I hear tell. Meanwhile, he might have to work harder to kill it before it takes form this year, or we'll see if he'll give it a veto.

*--The Kenyan Pretender plans to tell America that a college education is no longer a choice but an economic necessity. Know what this means? We not only can't view a college education as a luxury, but we can't afford the mentality that college students are mere consumers. They are people who need to be educated, and making sure that the lazy and detached are coddled so they don't complain too loudly ought not be a terribly important priority. In other words, an education isn't a product; and as such, choice in provider isn't a good way to guarantee successful outcomes (filed under, "How not to regard a primary education").

*--Teh Demas points out the obvious ... government jobs, at the end of the day, are still jobs. Only in rightwing Bizzarro World is laying off public sector employees not a source for unemployment.

*--This shit is probably worthy of its own post, but I'm swamped with other stuff to do tonight and won't be able to get to it for a couple of days. Item 1: Nearly half of Michigan's children qualify for free or reduced lunches. Item 2: Michigan has seen a rise in cases of child absue and neglect. This is your prolonged economic downturn at work, coupled with a lost sense of opportunity for lack of proper funding for education and worker training programs; and dovetailing nicely with state government's War on the Poor.

*--Goat Killer will appear with a professional fraud to pimp his own war on Islam.

*--Brenda Lawrence is running for Congress against Gary Peters and Hansen Clarke. Someone mentioned this the other day in comments, but I'm only now getting around to putting it into a post for everyone to read and marvel.

*--Virg Bernero, who has railed long and hard against Wall Street's predation of Main Street, announces a plan to use the labor of Main Street to build a temple to the gambling mentality cherished on Wall Street. Naturally, the Saginaw Chippewas, who once spent $50,000 for a voter list valued at less than $10,000 to protect their near monoply of gambling, want to put the skids on it.

*--And these people bitch endlessly about the use of publicly funded resources by unions. If Right to Life wants to run a fund raiser, let Right to Life find someone else besides your local Secretary of State's office to do it.

*--Jack Lessenberry has a point.

*--So much for non-intrusive state government. Tom McMillin is targeted by protesters for sponsoring a bill that would prohibit local government from adopting non-discrimination ordinances. You can really blame benevolent overlord Rick Michigan for this. Last year, he had the opportunity to put the kibosh on this kind of nonsense by vetoing a bill liked only by social conservatives (the business community didn't like it, local governments didn't like it, the universities really didn't like it). Instead, he sent a message to the Taliban wing of the Republican Party that if they push the stupidest, most backward bills on Earth at him, he might actually sign them.

Free editing advice

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 25, 2012 at 10:50:53 AM EST

We try to be generous around here with grammar errors and spelling screw ups found on the Internets. This machine doesn't come with a built-in spelling and grammar checker, after all, and it also lacks an error. We're not so generous with press releases or campaign donation blegs, however, since those come with the built-in luxury of time. Someone can actually go through those with a pair of fresh eyes before sending them out. That goes doubly for a party that has draped itself in the mantle of education reform. If you can't be trusted to write a grammatically accurate press release, why should anyone trust you to monkey with education?

The first sentence to last night's rebuttal to the president's State of the Union:

"Talk is no longer cheap in under Barak Obama."

This train wreck of a sentence is the first in the response by GOP party chairman Bobby Shostak, and it starts with the apparent confusion about which preposition to use. You can understand that confusion, since it's difficult to understand how talk takes place "under" any person. Note to student: Please rewrite for clarity.

Then, this morning: 

Republicans have brought positive bold ideas to the table to help reign in government spending only to be blocked by Democrat members of Congress.

We'll ignore for a second the wrong proper noun. Democrat, as most of us know, isn't the official name of the party and its use is only possible if you're referring to someone as an individual member of the Democratic Party. But, we know this is purposefully bad English intended to steer clear of suggesting that members of the Democratic Party are somehow more clearly linked to democratic ideas. The offending English here is the lack of comma between the two coordinate adjectives. What sort of ideas have Republicans brought? Positive and bold ideas. Or, "Republicans have brought positive, bold ideas ..." Note to student: Please correct and resubmit campaign contribution request.

Note to state Republican Party: Please hire someone to edit this stuff. Or, if you're really into the idea of independent contractors, I'm happy to do it for $20 an hour, with a minimum of one hour charged per press release.

The Upper Peninsula grows disenchanted with the teabaggin' surgeon

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 25, 2012 at 09:51:34 AM EST

This might explain why Gary McDowell got love from the DNCC.

MICHIGAN 1st District: 40% say Rep. Dan Benishek deserves reelection, his approval rating is just 33 percent.  He trails 2010 opponent Gary McDowell 46 percent to 41 percent in a hypothetical re-match.

Margin of error is 3 percent.

The other side of this is that last time around, Benishek won a Tea Party primary by beating out seasoned campaigners and then won a wave election. In other words, Benishek might need the score run up by things outside his control to compensate for a comparative lack of campaign experience, and the Tea Party appears to have lost its effectiveness.

Good help is hard to find

by: Eric B.

Tue Jan 24, 2012 at 12:27:05 PM EST

We return this morning to the city of Troy, where weak mayor Janice Daniel has once again managed to create a stupid controversy that could have been avoided if she understood the purpose of a city manager.

Troy City Manager John Szerlag has struck back at Troy Mayor Janice Daniels in the latest development involving the embattled mayor and the controversial Troy Transit Center proposal.

In a letter dated Jan. 16 but emailed to people on a city email list on Monday, Szerlag tells Daniels that she has damaged his reputation.

The city manager in this sort of city governance system is supposed to be the actual person running things. The mayor, as we've noted before, is supposed to be a largely ceremonial figure, cutting ribbons and marrying non-traditional couples who can't or don't want to find a holy man for the job. Instead of retreating to the sidelines where she actually belongs (if she wants to really run things, she ought to go back to school, get her masters in public administration, and work her way up to the job, she has instead made governance in the city of Troy about her ... and not in a good way.

The parallel universe from which hails this morning's Freep editorial

by: Eric B.

Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 10:59:30 AM EST

Yesterday Gazoo the Far Seeing must have broken into the building in which the Detroit Free Press is published and hyponotized whatever poor schlub was tasked with writing this morning's editorial, telling him to drink deeply from the cup of High Broderism.

Why indulge a weakened president's desperate appeal for compromise, they reasoned, with a decisive Republican victory scarcely a year away?

If this scenario seems eerily familiar, it's because Democrats were just as disdainful of compromise in 2009, when Obama's decisive victory and the election of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate seemed to herald the end of divided government. Minority Republicans who sought changes in the Democrats' health care and stimulus initiatives were similarly rebuffed.

This is an editorial with the headline "State of disunion: President Obama must make divided government work" that lays out the case that for the past year that the problem in Washington has been obstructionist Republicans, who've made it an Election Year priority to thwart the president so they can win back the White House. Much of the rest of the editorial is devoted likewise to this idea. Yet, it's somehow the president's job to fix government with an opposition party dedicated to thwarting him to win an election. One hates to invoke the cliche "Blame the victim," but one can find no better description.

Let's also, for a second, consider the idea that Democratic majorities ignored Republican concerns or suggestions in both the original stimulus, which was considerably scaled back from its original package and that consisted of about half tax cuts over noisy Republican objections; and health care reform, which junked the progressive-preferred public option in favor of a universal mandate and health care exchanges, both ideas of which were originally offered up by the Republican Party. What the Free Press' editorial writers are mistaking for Democratic rebuffing of Republican ideas are Republican ideas that were incorporated only to see Republicans vote against them anyway in lock-step fashion because their priority since the first day of the Obama administration has been to win back the White House by miring the federal government in gridlock. This is the same sort of thing that has made a 60-vote minimum to move any significant legislation a de facto requirement in the Senate, and where handfuls of the president's appointees -- both judicial and regulatory -- remain locked up because a properly functioning administration doesn't hurt the president's chances on Election Day.

How is it that the Freeps' editorial writers, after three years of this nonsense, simply don't recognize reality. It's not as if anything's changed, or even that the Republican Party has made serious attempts to hide it. They've been doing it more or less right out in public, and there's no excuse for a major daily newspaper's editorial page writers to overlook it. If you want to know why people have stopped taking editorial pages seriously, it's mindlessly lazy stuff like this, that refuses to take a stand on the grounds that they might be criticized as partisan while striking a pose that while it might be charitably described as adult abdicates the newspaper's primary responsibility of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

Update! ... More from Planet Ogo.

Yet the polarization that aroused S&P's anxiety seems only to intensify as November's election looms closer. The latest polls reveal an electorate evenly divided between the president and his likeliest Republican challenger, with most independent voters contemptuous of both -- hardly an auspicious moment for the president's third State of the Union address, which will be broadcast Tuesday night.

Except that the Freep isn't supposed to make divided government work with his most likely challenger in November (and who is that now, after last night?). He's supposed to do that with Congress, and while the president's approval ratings are now a tad north of 50 percent, those of Congress are below those of child molesters, atheists, and newspaper journalists.

Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's Big Government approach to education

by: Eric B.

Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 12:45:55 PM EST

The intellectual roots of the modern conservative movement grew up as a counterargument to the idea that came into fashion during the Great Depression and World War II (as well as the post-war period) that the great ills of society could be addressed through government intervention starting with experts at the top. Conservatism grew out of the idea that societal's ills were not solved by technocrats who could engineer solutions through the machinery of government, but by individuals using whatever resources -- including those made available by government -- to do it themselves. I give you modern conservatism's answer to its own intellectual genesis.

"Our intention is, from where we were last year, is hopefully to invest more in education," Snyder said. But he stressed he wants to "invest more, not just spend more," and funding would be tied to "best practices" and measurable results.

What are these best practices, who determined them using what criteria, and will anyone consider whether they ought to be applied equally to every school district in the state? These are the sorts of questions that real inheritors of conservatism would be asking. Unfortunately, those sorts of questions don't fit in to the modern Republican Party's real agenda, which is busting unions to maintain power in the state Legislature. As has been noted before here, modern conservatism has become a bankrupt intellectual force, co-opted and corrupted by lesser persons in the pursuit of wealth for the few. Instead, ironically, the people questioning the efficacy of this sort of top-down Big Government planning are labor unions, Democrats, and other assorted riff raff from the left.

What is the Right arguing? We go to Magic Frank, whose response to the governor's suggestion that we need to invest more money in education demonstrates impeccable timing.

Snyder's plan isn't perfect in that it appears to create yet another layer of state bureaucracy with his proposed "Michigan Office of the Great Start — Early Childhood," an idea that has "more spending" written all over it.

This comes towards the end of an entire column devoted to lauding the idea of attaching education money to things with a demonstrable record of success in educating children. That would be early childhood education, which Magic Frank objects to because it means spending money on it.

Additionally, the governor's proposed initiative to require a "post-secondary degree or skilled trades credential" for all Michigan residents represents an unwelcome intrusion on individual freedoms, and unenforceable without the threat of penalty.

Kind of like requiring kids to stay in primary schools through the age of 16? Keep in mind that these are the same people who endlessly bitch about having to take care of people who lack the education and skills to compete in today's workforce -- people who never graduated high school, or people whose education stopped when they got a job on an assembly line -- through welfare, but insist that it's their right to be so. Is it incoherence? That's giving Magic Frank a lot of credit in the first place.

Keep in mind that Magic Frank just last week insisted that Newt Gingrich could no longer declare himself a conservative because a super PAC supporting  him attacked Mitt Romney's community-destroying approach to making money as anti-capitalist. Now, he's okay with Big Government ordering schools what to do in order to qualify for state money.

But, it's not just Magic Frank. It's also members of the state Legislature, and it's not just primary education but also the state's university system.

Rep. Bob Genetski (R-Saugatuck), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee on Higher Education, is an outspoken critic of university spending practices. In an interview with Bridge’s Ron French, published last week, Genetski talked about whether Michigan has made a conscious policy choice to have individual families shoulder more and more of the cost of an education.

“We’re not saying we don’t care about higher education. … But there are so many places we can cut, and higher education happens to be one of those. It happens also to be one where, as soon as you cut it, (universities) can turn around and, instead of looking inward for legitimate cuts, increase tuition. … Parents tell me universities don’t make a strong effort to make cuts. Taxpayers deserve better.”

One doubts that he has actually heard from many parents complaining that universities are making too little effort to make cuts. In fact, considering the complex nature of how universities operate, and the fact that they are getting more complex, it's doubtful that many parents -- outside those employed at a public university -- can actually make a statement like that from an educated standpoint. But, again, if your goal is to force changes from above -- a decidedly different approach than what the intellectual lights of the conservative movement would have argued fifty years ago (well, except that loon Ayn Rand) -- then this is what you say.

Terrorized by Jack Lessenberry, Mike Kowall drops out of race

by: Eric B.

Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 10:01:18 AM EST

Just the other day Jack Lessenberry suggested that voters in the 11th Congressional District remember Mike Kowall as the guy who, when Monty Burns was thrown in jail for contempt, that they also toss in the clink the head of MDOT and some random, unnamed official from the city of Detroit. Then, this.

State Sen. Mike Kowall, R-White Lake, decided today to suspend his campaign for the 11th Congressional district seat.

The decision will avoid a primary fight with incumbent U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter, R-Livonia, who abandoned a run for president and decided to seek reelection to his seat.

Are the two things connected? Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.

By the way, just for the sake of clarity here ... Thad McCotter abandoned his run for president in the same way that I abandoned a run last week after putting my shoes on and looking outside to see freezing rain falling from the clouds. That is, he was the only person who rain who never enjoyed a moment at the top, except from the state's punditocracy, who wondered for a brief time whether he actually had a shot.

About that Keystone pipeline

by: Eric B.

Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 13:30:31 PM EST

The first thing you need to know about the announcement yesterday that the Keystone XL pipeline's permit was denied was that it ultimately came as a political decision. Not by the president, mind you, but by Congressional Republicans who demanded an answer to the permit question in such a tight timeframe that the president, who most indicators had as otherwise supporting it (in fact, it appears that he wanted to wait until after the 2012 to stick it to the hippies), said he had very little recourse but to deny it.

"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," Obama said in a statement. "I'm disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration's commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil."

This was essentially the consensus view among the Beltway press, that as part of the payroll tax cut holiday deal that they would hand the president a very narrow window in which to make a permitting decision on Keystone. Their intent, naturally, was to use his rejection as an Election Year cudgel. In fact, the president signaled that the Canadians could reapply for the permit next year, giving the State Department the time they believe is necessary to make it happen.

Please note that this had nothing to do with "the hippies," who continue to notch one of the worst imaginable performance records when it comes to actually executing their agenda and who do it in such a way that they are easy to blame for when things outside their control go wrong.

Bear in mind that this analysis takes place outside the framework of partisan shouting. Based on the accounts available in basically every media outlet, the president wanted to approve the permit but was given too little time to do it right and so had to reject it, which fulfilled part of the Republican plan this year to attack the president on the topic of jobs. The only people who are really arguing that the president caved to environmentalists and cost tens of thousands of American jobs as well as ceding energy security to the Chinese are people who've become entirely partisan. Cue, this morning's editorial in the Detroit News.

For someone whose operating slogan is "We Can't Wait," it's curious that President Barack Obama is willing to wait and wait and wait for the Keystone XL Pipeline project and the 20,000 desperately needed jobs it promises.

The 20,000 number, of course, is complete rubbish, although that's on the low end of the scale for predicted job creation. Some of the talking heads at Fox News were predicted hundreds of thousands of jobs, although at the end of this video courtesy Media Matters, the company that wants the pipeline itself says the number of jobs created would actually be in the hundreds. A few hundred ... 20,000 ... what's the difference?

The Keystone project is the subject of more than 10,000 pages of environmental studies. Every possible route has been explored. The State Department twice ruled the pipeline would have no impact on sensitive environmental areas, and initially recommended approval. But it switched its opinion to align with the president's political strategy.

Not to enrage the state of Nebraska, whose Congressional delegation wanted the federal government to find a different path. So much for state's rights and fighting a federal government forcing its will down the throats of locals, right?

China wants this oil, which would go a long way toward freeing the United States from dependence on petroleum from unsavory places, and is urging an alternate pipeline to the Pacific coast.

And, what we have here is perhaps the most poorly informed, least accurate editorial you're going to read this calendar year. It's not so much that they have committed a gross factual error here. The idea that the tar sands produce oil and not something that has to be first refined into a synthetic form of it, or that China would get all of it, or that the president is handing the Chinese a "strategic advantage" are just simply daft. It's almost as if the only thing the author of this editorial understands about global energy markets is what they've learned off the back of a box of cereal.

You can't really blame the News' editorial page. They don't actually do journalism there, but instead participate in the poorly informed echo chamber that is rightwing politics. Once you understand that their advocacy is intended to substitute noise for insight, you can sleep better knowing that the things published there carry the same amount of reality-based weight as press releases from Mike Rogers' office.

It's cold out, and here are some links

by: Eric B.

Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 11:00:23 AM EST

This is going to be a really, really long post of links. Stuff's been building up the last couple of days, which includes a good deal of mucous in my chest. Now all of it, the mucous included, is sorta coming out. If I really wanted to synchronize, I'd make the background of MichLib a lovely shade of bright greenish yellow. Anyway, if my laptop weather widget is accurate, the temperature is in the single digits, which means you all have motivation to stay inside and read, read, READ!

Onward!

*--More from the State of the State, which appears to have been universally panned as vague and empty (and largely bereft of mentions of the environment, which isn't surprising). This time from Stephen Henderson, who benevolent overlord Rick Michigan tells to go suck it by way of dismissing all of his critics with a wave of the hand. This, by the way, is endlessly annoying ... why would MiOSHA tell someone they had to put the toilet seat down? One imagines it might have something to do with infection control, but when you're entire ideology is given over to taking such stuff on faith, thinking things through is never a priority. Like the ACLU, KKKlinton, William Ayers, ACORN, and a few other things ... the mere mention of regulation says one thing to the general public and an entirely different thing to conservaives.

*--Gary McDowell gets some love from the DNCC in his bid to unseat the teabaggin' surgeon, Dan Benishek. The DNCC the other day also said it thought it could retake the House, which probably isn't as tall an order as you might think with the general approval rating for a Republican-dominated Congress less than 10 percent (yes, I know, the Senate ... anyone heard from Harry Reid lately?¹).

*--Janice Daniels remains more spooked by the idea of urban youth visiting Troy than building a bridge into the future.

*--Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's tenor towards state workers, which is somewhat different than those of a certain neighbor to the west, has calmed jangled nerves. In other words, he's likely to get better production out of state workers by not treating them like an enemy that has to be crushed at all costs.

*--Mike Kowall makes an early run at the Most Odious rankings by suggesting that when Matty Maroun was thrown in jail for failing to make good on a contract, that the head of MDOT as well as someone from Detroit. Jack Lessenberry's suggestion is that the voters of the district remember this when election day comes, and if I had a dime each time people ignored this sort of plea I could buy myself a seat in Congress.

*--The Bridge looks at township fund balances, in two articles. My chief quibble with the package is that they allow to let hang out there the suggestion that townships build up huge fund balances, but don't do a lot of asking what some of these township are saving to build. I mean, before local Democrats took over our neighboring charter township, they built up savings mostly by refusing to increase the number of services it provided and instead got them subsidized by everyone else.

*--Dear Plymouth-Canton Schools: Banning books for whatever reason is always a terrible idea. Always. Or, as the poet says, "They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove 'em."

*--An Op-Ed piece on Right to Work. Again, I hope they start publicly pushing this, because it's a good way to guarantee that the Republicans will lose the House, the state Supreme Court, and probably at least one Michigan seat in Congress.

*--Tim Walberg: Partisan hack.

*--The future of Michigan's film tax credits is cloudy.

*--Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan to enrage his own party early this year, first by pushing for an Obamacare-inspired, consumer-friendly health care exchange, the likes of which Wisconsin's Scott Walker has rejected millions in federal dollars for; and also for pushing to embrace pro-immigrant immigration reform. I now look forward to the coming news that Goat Killer and Tom McMillin are holding prayer meetings under the Rotunda so that God will reveal to them whether benevolent overlord Rick Michigan is really just a secret agent for promoting Sharia.

It's now 11 degrees outside, which is perfect timing for me to go out and purchase bananas.

¹-Yes, I know. Harry Reid shit-canned a vote on SOPA/PIPA Friday morning, which is the first reminder anyone's had this calendar year that he still served in the Senate. 

Foreign policy, Nolan Finley style

by: Eric B.

Fri Jan 20, 2012 at 09:39:37 AM EST

From the same people who brought you the invasion of Iraq while not knowing the two major schools of Muslim thought.

But he stood out in this one for reminding the Obama administration that Taliban sensibilities weren't nearly as tender when they videotaped their beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, or when they hung the butchered remains of American contractors from an overpass.

Not to get all pointy-headed on you, but...

A) The Taliban is a political and religious movement whose ideology is drawn from a violent interpretation of Sharia blended with local, Pashtun tribal codes. It is rooted regionally, confined to the wilderness areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

B) Daniel Pearl was killed by al-Qaida in urban Karachi, Pakistan while tracking down the link between shoe bomber Richard Reid and al-Qaida. That one dude, who looked like he fresh off a five-day bender when photographed after his capture, says he did the deed personally. Al-Qaida, while hostile to Shiia, the other school of Islam, is neither confined to region nor necessarily steeped in the tribal codes of what the British once referred to as the Northwest Frontier. That is, the Taliban and al-Qaida are different things.

C) The four Blackwater contracters killed and maimed in Fallujah were not killed by the Taliban, since the Taliban has never operated in Iraq. They were killed by Iraqi insurgents, although it is unclear whether those responsible were locals enraged by a hamhanded American occupation or foreign fighters fighting under the banner "al-Qaida in Iraq" (an entirely different organization from al-Qaida the terrorist organization) who were encouraged by that. What is certain, however, is that the Taliban weren't involved.

Now, like Finley, I've never actually fought a battle. I did serve in the military, which does give some insight into the thought processes of military commanders, and I can tell you that desecrating the bodies of your enemy isn't something the military chain of command is likely to take any more lightly than have members of the Obama administration who Finley thinks are overreacting. Why? Because if there's anything that military commanders dislike, it is things that unnecessary complicate their mission.

Every four years, we hear about the horrors of negotiating with your enemies from whatever Republican is trying to throw red meat to his party's base. These people are so damned dumb, they not only can't learn from their failures they can't learn from their successes. The Surge in Iraq wasn't just successful because we flooded the country with a bunch of troops. There were intense negotiations and bribes floated to bring war-weary but also wary tribes from under the influence of factionalization and into the fold of a peaceful resolution. That is, they were encouraged by money and the perception of security to come to the negotiating table and settle differences there rather than with car bombs. This is a simple principle that has been at work with every insurgency in the modern time (the notable exception was the British put-down of an insurgency of isolated Chinese communists in Malaysia).

In other words, the same negotiating table that the Republican field regularly holds in contempt for the sake of mollifying their own base of ignorant, xenophobic bigots is a critical tool in ending conflicts and allowing trapped superpowers to extract themselves as painlessly as possible. That makes anything that complicates that, like desecrating the bodies of your enemies, a threat to national security threat. Certainly not as bad as selling secrets about America's military communications system to the Israelis, but anyone who thinks to comment on this kind of stuff ought to at least be expected to recognize that it's not in the nation's best interest to pass this sort of stuff off with a "boys will be boys" attitude.

About last night

by: Eric B.

Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 12:41:04 PM EST

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.

The Day the Internet turned back on

by: Eric B.

Thu Jan 19, 2012 at 09:24:02 AM EST

Lil' Fella, the Man Who Never Surged, and Candice Miller ... those are the three Michigan Congresscritters who have currently listed themselves as opposing SOPA/PIPA, the two bills that would squeeze the Internet on behalf of an outdated, dinosaur-like entertainment industry. And, of course, there's John Conyers, the lone Michigan Congresscritter listed as supporting it. At least, that's according to the latest whip count.

Guess where this leaves us, sunshines? In the very curious position where we're better represented in Congress by Republicans than Democrats. Oh, someone mentioned on Facebook yesterday that John Dingell's office said The Dean is uncomfortable with the bills, as written. The solution to that is very simple. Declare your opposition to the bills as written. Word on the street is that the worst elements of the bills are being written out of the legislation, so it's a very easy position to take.

Meanwhile, you can register your dissatisfaction with Michigan's only active Congressional supporter, John Conyers, by tossing some coin at state Sen. Glenn Anderson, who has spoken out against both and has in the past put his oars in the water deeply enough to have some credibility on the issue. This isn't to preclude his other primary opponent, state Sen. Bert Johnson, but as of yesterday he didn't have an active Act Blue page to donate through.

Update! ... Dale Kildee opposes. So does Sandy Levin.

While I was sleeping: Mad Jack makes it official

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 18, 2012 at 20:51:38 PM EST

Jack Hoogendyk throws his hat into the ring, signifying his willingess to sell one of Michigan's Congressional seats to the Club for Growth.

Former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk announced today he will challenge Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.) for a second time in the Republican primary.

We all knew this was going to happen when Mad Jack and the Club for Growth started sniffing each other's rear ends a couple of months ago, and especially after Mad Jack said a decision was forthcoming earlier this month.

It's not a circus until someone shows up with a foam pig

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 18, 2012 at 17:02:28 PM EST

Apparently someone decided that political discourse hasn't been degraded quite badly enough and dragged Mr. Perks to Lansing to make sure that job doesn't go unfinished.

What's the occasion? Tonight's State of the State address! I see by the lead-up coverage that people are mad that the governor's promise to put a dashboard in every pot hasn't come through to fruition, probably because benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's real agenda this last year wasn't actually about creating Internet dashboards for state agencies. And, let's face it, the State of the State isn't actually a speech intended for consumption by the general public. It's become a speech intended to be consumed by the small minority of people who follow state politics and the media. Tomorrow, there will be media stories about what was said, and perhaps a comment or two of rebuttal. The State of the State is really just another half-inning in a game of insider political baseball.

The other side of this is that while we normally consider the State of the State to be the governor's opportunity to set his agenda for the upcoming year, benevolent overlord Rick Michigan is apt to deal with a Legislature that wants to lead him around by the nose. They do have the upper hand and both chambers are filled with people whose chief goal it is to use the machinery of public policy to torment constituent groups they dislike for reasons of simple bigotry.

The day the Internet went dark

by: Eric B.

Wed Jan 18, 2012 at 15:26:35 PM EST

The dearth of posts yesterday and today is not related to the Internet boycott under way at a number of the most prominent sites around to a pair of bills under consideration in Congress that could potentially negatively transform how the Internet works. The bills aren't being pushed by companies that have used the Internet to innovate or transform, but old-style companies that have seen changes forced to their business models thanks to it. That is, the bills aren't about making the Internet a better place, they are about making it a worse place for interests that have been rendered largely obselete by it and rather than changing with the times wish to hold back change.

It's my sad duty to report that John Conyers, longtime Detroit Congressman, is one of the sponsors of this legislation and part of waning support for it. Stifling change on behalf of monied interests, that is, is a bipartisan affair.

"The notion that this bill threatens freedom of information is insupportable," said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat and another SOPA sponsor.

I checked, and unfortunately it appears that Conyers' primary challenge for next year, state Sen. Bert Johnson, is not currently accepting contributions through Act Blue, which seems like a better way to undermine support for this legislation that blacking out the Internet for the day.

Update! ... I am informed by anonymous sources that there is another challenger to Conyers next year, and I'm sorry I forgot about him. State Sen. Glenn Anderson has long been a friend to the Internet and even this site. Shortly after taking this site over, I visited a few of our esteemed elected officials in Lansing, and he was one of those who sat down for a brief chat. He also came out to a reception that evening and hung out with the MichLib crew for a few minutes. He also has a working Act Blue page.