WASHINGTON — Lobbyists were in a tizzy on Tuesday over provisions of a Senate-passed ethics bill that tighten regulation of lobbying and require secretive “political intelligence” firms to register in the same way as lobbyists.
House Republicans and their floor leader, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, said they would amend the bill, going to the House floor this week, to strengthen it.
But Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said, “I think ‘strengthening’ here is a euphemism for ‘weakening.’ ”
And Representative Tim Walz, Democrat of Minnesota, said the bill, to ban insider trading by members of Congress, was being rewritten behind closed doors by House Republican leaders. “How ironic,” Mr. Walz said. “Insiders now appear to be writing a bill meant to ban insider trading.”
The bill is intended to restore trust in Congress, but Mr. Walz said the revisions could “make the cynicism that’s rampant in America even greater.”
LANSING — The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.
GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.
Citizens United decision and voting obstruction law decisions linked
We have seen the world created by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and it doesn’t work. Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy.
In fact, this decision should be seen as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rig the electoral system against their opponents. How else to explain conservative legislation in state after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income voters — particularly members of minority groups — through voter identification laws, shortened voting periods and restrictions on voter registration campaigns?
It's halftime in America
Lower than expected unemployment, stock market surges
An unexpectedly rosy jobs report set off a chain reaction Friday, upending economists’ gloomy predictions for the coming year, leading to a surge on Wall Street and potentially boggling the political calculus of the 2012 presidential campaigns.
The surprise — that the unemployment rate had dipped for the fifth straight month, to 8.3 percent — was first reflected in the stock market, where the Dow Jones industrial average soared to its highest mark since the beginning of the financial crisis. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, hit an 11-year high.
Obama to Congress "Don't muck it up"
Reagan economist says "economic conditions are entirely different today"
In their debates, ads and speeches, the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are vying for the label of most Reagan-esque.
Judging from the candidates’ tax proposals, they seem to believe that the most Reagan-like candidate is the one with the biggest tax cut. But as the person who drafted the 1981 Reagan tax cut, I think Republicans misunderstand the premises upon which Reagan’s economic policies were based and why those policies can’t — and shouldn’t — be replicated today.
All of the evidence tells us that the economy’s fundamental problem today is not on the supply side but the demand side. According to a recent study by Credit Suisse, two-thirds of the difference in growth at this point in the business cycle, compared with previous cycles, is due to slower consumer spending. And low inflation — as well as widespread unemployment, vast stocks of unsold houses, empty factories and other indicators — tells us that money is tight, not loose, as was the case in the late 1970s.
“Low interest rates are generally a sign that money has been tight,” economist Milton Friedman wrote in 1997. Yet, absurdly, Republicans continually berate the Federal Reserve for being too easy; some even insist, insanely, that the United States should return to the gold standard, even though it was a key cause of the Great Depression.
Because inflation and interest rates are low, Fed policy is constrained today in ways it was not in the early 1980s. Back then, the Fed could bring down the federal funds rate to a little less than the inflation rate and create negative real rates, thus stimulating borrowing, investment and consumption. It can’t do that now because it can’t reduce market interest rates below zero.
Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies. Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances.
Bruce Bartlett was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official during the George H.W. Bush administration.
If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”
Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.
Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.
So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.
President's remarks at National Prayer Breakfast
Both these articles about the fight in Afghanistan are instructive and worth the reading time.
Figures released today by the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget show that migration rates of 18- to 24-year-olds weren’t as steep in 2009-10.
The migration rate for ages 18-19 topped 5.5 percent in 2008-09, compared with about 4 percent the next year. For 20- to 24-year-olds, out-of-state migration was about 5 percent in 2008-09, compared with about 4.5 percent in 2009-10.
“Michigan is finally starting to add jobs after several years,” state demographer Ken Darga said.
Still, more people are moving out of the state than in.
About 116,000 relocated to Michigan in 2010 and 117,000 in 2009. But 178,000 left in 2010 and 206,000 moved out the previous year.
[There is a] fundamental disagreement over the nature of health insurance. Should it be “social” insurance, with which financial risk is leveled between those who are ill and healthy, so the carefree twentysomething and diabetic elderly man pay equally into the system? Or would it be better structured as “actuarial” insurance, where those expected to consume more shell out more, just as those who drive flashy, expensive cars or rack up speeding tickets pay higher auto insurance rates? If your view is the former, you generally support the notion of a single-payer system, as ... many Democrats do. On the other hand, if you see health insurance as actuarial, you favor tiered premiums depending on age and pre-existing conditions, and tend to like health savings accounts, as many Republicans do. This dispute is central to continuing political wrangling over the 2010 health reform legislation, the main provisions of which are scheduled to take effect in a few years.
But Americans made their choice clear long before Barack Obama ever signed the law—and they picked social insurance. The issue today isn’t whether we should redistribute health care dollars. We do, arguably to the same degree that every other country does.
Almost nothing that politicians are currently debating is likely to change the overall costs of care. What’s merely at stake is the shell game about who appears to be paying.
Hiding the redistribution inherent in American health care has a corrosive effect on our national dialogue. It’s wrongly believed that our system prizes individualism and financial responsibility, when nothing could be further from the truth. Arguably, our system is just as redistributive as those of Europe, Canada, or Australia. We just do it in the dark and pretend to be exceptional.
Republicans hated Obama as much on his first day in office as today
“Obama’s ratings have been consistently among the most polarized for a president in the last 60 years,” concludes Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones in a memo summing up the results. “That may not be a reflection on Obama himself as much as on the current political environment in the United States, because Obama’s immediate predecessor, Bush, had similarly polarized ratings, particularly in the latter stages of his presidency after the rally in support from the 9/11 terror attacks faded.”
Our guess is that Jones’ latter hypothesis is the right one — that we are simply living in an era in which Democrats dislike a Republican president (and Republicans dislike a Democratic one) even before the commander in chief has taken a single official action.
Global elite discuss economy failure at World Economic Forum
IS 20th-century capitalism failing 21st-century society? Members of the global elite debated that unusual question on Wednesday at the annual World Economic Forum [in Davos, Switzerland].
There was a time, not long ago, when such a debate would have been held only among the protesters who annually shelter in igloos farther down the Alpine slopes. So it is encouraging that more than three years since the global financial crisis, a belated process of soul-searching has begun in search of the right lessons to learn from it.
Both the United States and Britain suffered because their economies were overly reliant on the financial sector’s artificial profits; living standards for the many worsened while the economic rewards skewed to the top 1 percent; a capitalist model encouraged short-term decision-making oriented toward quarterly profits rather than long-term health; and vested interests — from giant banks to media moguls —were deemed too big to fail or too powerful to challenge.
We need to recognize that the trickle-down promise of conservative theorists has turned into a gravity-defying reality in which wealth has flowed upward disproportionately and, too often, undeservedly. To address properly the squeeze in middle-class incomes on both sides of the Atlantic requires fresh thinking from governments about how people train for their working lives and what a living wage should be.
Ed Miliband is a member of the British Parliament and the leader of the Labour Party.
When not holding forth from his favorite table at L’Auberge Chez François, nestled among the manor houses of lobbyist-thick Great Falls, Va., Dr. Newton L. Gingrich likes to lecture people about food stamps and how out-of-touch the elites are with real America.
Gingrich, as he showed in a gasping effort in Thursday night’s debate in Florida, is a demagogue distilled, like a French sauce, to the purest essence of the word’s meaning. He has no shame. He thinks the rules do not apply to him. And he turns questions about his odious personal behavior into mock outrage over the audacity of the questioner.
Michele Glinn loved her job, and she was good at it. As the only Ph.D toxicologist working in the Michigan State Police toxicology unit, she analyzed blood samples for alcohol and other drugs — and crisscrossed the state testifying in court.
Frustrated by unpaid furlough days, a shrinking staff and a negative public perception of state employees, Glinn sat down at her computer one day last fall and sent her resume to an employment search firm. “I got a call from the headhunter the same day,” Glinn recalled. “Two days later, I had a phone interview; a week later, I was in St. Louis being offered a job on the spot.”
Her U-Haul crossed the state border in November, leaving Michigan with no one who can provide expert testimony for the prosecution in alcohol and drug cases.
As the state shrinks its work force and has cut pay through unpaid furloughs, those with the most ability to find jobs in the private sector — usually workers with advanced education such as Glinn — leave.
A study conducted in 2009 found that state employees with advanced degrees (above a bachelor’s) earn less than they could in the private sector. State employees with a master’s degree earned 36 percent less; those with a Ph.D earned 24 percent less.
“If you’re a janitor working for the state, you’re probably getting paid pretty well, compared to other janitors,” Ballard said. “But if you’re a doctor or a lawyer, you’re taking a huge pay cut to work for the state.”
“I loved this job,” Glinn said. “This was my favorite job I’ve had. I felt like I was making a difference.”
Today, Glinn makes 30 percent more than she did with the Michigan State Police. She works fewer hours, and is part of a profit-sharing program at a private company.
This article regarding the State of the Union speech leverages Internet technology in some unique ways --
The left column of the page has an index that shows the time and topic for the president's speech. When you click an item in the index, e.g. "11:48 Corporate Tax Reform", several things happen on the page: 1) The video of the speech jumps to that spot in the speech and starts playing. 2) The middle column on the page jumps to the text for that part of the speech. 3) The right column on the page jumps to a fact check article regarding the president's assertions.
Massive 83% corporate tax cut hurts the young, old and poor
Last year, we saw a massive 83% corporate tax cut to replace the Michigan Business Tax without a shred of proof offered that it will create jobs. Yes, the MBT was broken, but, no, it should not have been fixed at the expense of the elderly, low-income residents and Michigan's homeless shelters and other nonprofits.
U.P. attorney says (R) Congressman Benishek's Norquist pledge tied to special interests
Congressman Benishek pledged fealty to a Harvard graduate [Grover Norquist] who is the stereotypical Washington, D.C. insider. The congressman signed a loyalty pledge to this ultimate insider and his special interest group [ATR] before he was elected.
What seems plausible is that the pledge made to the ATR connects a candidate to money coming from special interests with ties to Mr. Nordquist.
One must question Congressman Benishek's commitment to special interests who do not reside in his district. Congressman Benishek follows all ATR's positions, even those not involving taxes, but that do increase the power of the wealthy. www.atr.org/issues
In support of the ATR agenda Congressman Benishek voted to reduce Medicare benefits, to increase the tax burden on small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance, to revoke health insurance for young adults, and to permit insurance companies to deny children health insurance for preexisting conditions.
The 1st Congressional District deserves better. It deserves someone whose soul is not in bondage.
America’s unionized workers, buffeted by layoffs and stagnating wages, face another phenomenon that is increasingly throwing them on the defensive: lockouts.
“This is a sign of increased employer militancy,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. “Lockouts were once so rare they were almost unheard of. Now, not only are employers increasingly on the offensive and trying to call the shots in bargaining, but they’re backing that up with action — in the form of lockouts.”
The number of strikes has declined to just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago. Lockouts, on the other hand, have grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages.
[T]here are reasons to think that we’re finally on the (slow) road to better times. And we wouldn’t be on that road if Mr. Obama had given in to Republican demands that he slash spending, or the Federal Reserve had given in to Republican demands that it tighten money.
[T]here’s evidence that the two great problems at the root of our slump — the housing bust and excessive private debt — are finally easing.
That’s not what you hear in public debate, of course, where all the focus is on rising government debt. But anyone who has looked seriously at how we got into this slump knows that private debt, especially household debt, was the real culprit: it was the explosion of household debt during the Bush years that set the stage for the crisis. And the good news is that this private debt has declined in dollar terms, and declined substantially as a percentage of G.D.P., since the end of 2008.
But things could have been worse; they would have been worse if we had followed the policies demanded by Mr. Obama’s opponents. For as I said at the beginning, Republicans have been demanding that the Fed stop trying to bring down interest rates and that federal spending be slashed immediately — which amounts to demanding that we emulate Europe’s failure.
And if this year’s election brings the wrong ideology to power, America’s nascent recovery might well be snuffed out.
In 2008, 400 wealthiest paid 18.1% of income to I.R.S., in 2007 16.6%
Mr. Romney’s tax dance is doing us all a service by highlighting the unwise, unjust and expensive favors being showered on the upper-upper class. At a time when all the self-proclaimed serious people are telling us that the poor and the middle class must suffer in the name of fiscal probity, such low taxes on the very rich are indefensible.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has been releasing income and tax data for the 400 highest-income filers. In 2008, the most recent year available, these filers paid only 18.1 percent of their income in federal income taxes; in 2007, they paid only 16.6 percent. When you bear in mind that the rich pay little either in payroll taxes or in state and local taxes — major burdens on middle-class families — this implies that the top 400 filers faced lower taxes than many ordinary workers.
The main reason the rich pay so little is that most of their income takes the form of capital gains, which are taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent, far below the maximum on wages and salaries. So the question is whether capital gains — three-quarters of which go to the top 1 percent of the income distribution — warrant such special treatment.
A "pro-life" candidate?
Romneylies at 1/19/12 South Carolina Republican Debate
“Four [Bain investments] in particular created 120,000 jobs as of today. We started them years ago. They’ve grown well beyond the time I was there, to 120,000 people that have been employed by those enterprises. There are others we’ve been with, some of which have lost jobs. People have evaluated that since — well, since I ran four years ago, when I ran for governor. And those that have been documented to have lost jobs lost about 10,000 jobs.”
— Mitt Romney
Romney’s math gets a little funny here. In defending his tenure at Bain, he focuses on four companies that now employ 120,000, even though Bain’s investment ended years ago. His number of 10,000 jobs appears to mostly count losses when Bain owned the companies, or shortly after it sold them. But it is really an apples and oranges accounting.
In any case, Romney’s role at Bain was not to create jobs but to provide for good returns for his investors.
The Obama plan is “a 2,700-page massive tax increase, Medicare-cutting monster.”
— Romney
Here, the former governor melds together two of his favorite, but misleading, talking points. The size of the health care law actually tells you very little, and the number of pages is inflated because Congress had to pass two bills for parliamentary reasons. (There were also non-health care related items in the bill.) The actual consolidated bill is much smaller, probably about 907 pages.
As we have previously examined, the claim of “cutting” Medicare is dubious too. If the cuts were so bad, why have virtually all of them been adopted in the House GOP budget?
“I stood as a pro-life governor and that’s why the Massachusetts Pro-Life Family Association supported my record as governor, endorsed my record as governor.”
— Romney
Almost verbatim, Gingrich recited charges from a TV ad for which we had previously given two Pinocchios. Some of Romney’s actions after he announced he was “pro-life” caused angst among anti-abortion forces but by and large Gingrich’s claims are exaggerated.
As for Romney, he now touts the endorsement from the pro-life groups but when he was running for governor in 2002 he adamantly rejected it, as this video clip [below] shows.
Who's the more successful investor and capitalist: Romney or Obama?
Brendan Curran announces run for Otsego County Prosecutor
From 1/18/12 E-mail announcement
Curran for Prosecutor
I am pleased to announce that, having obtained and filed with the county clerk’s office the maximum number of nominating petition signatures, I am a candidate for the upcoming election for Otsego County Prosecutor.
A small Minnesota electronics company aims to bring TV manufacturing back to the U.S., hiring 100 workers at a plant in Canton [Michigan].
Element Electronics, which sells TVs made in China to big-box stores like Walmart and Target, has teamed up with a Michigan company, Lotus International, to produce low-priced flat-screen TVs that are 46 inches and larger.
The first large TVs could start rolling off an assembly line in March.
Romney's income tax 15%, speaker's fees "not much"
Mitt Romney has a new definition of "not much": $374,327.
On Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate finally admitted that the effective tax rate he has been paying for the last several years is likely below that of middle-class workers, which would also include military service members.
In Greenville, S.C., Romney was asked directly what his effective tax rate is. It was a hot topic of discussion at Monday night's debate, at which Romney repeatedly declined to fully commit to release his tax returns.
"It's probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything," said Romney on Tuesday. "For the past 10 years, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income or earned annual income. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. Then, I get speakers fees from time to time, but not very much."
Not very much? According to his personal financial disclosure, from February 2010 to February 2011, Romney earned $374,327.62 in speaking fees.
Romneylies at 1/16/12 South Carolina Republican Debate
“I was also proud of the fact that we balanced the budget every year I was in office. We reduced taxes 19 times.”
— Romney
Somehow, he always fails to mention that, in order to balance the budget, he created hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new fees and closed as much as $1.5 billion worth of corporate tax loopholes.
“My firm invested in that steel mill [Georgetown Steel] and another one in Kansas City, tried to make them successful — invested there for seven or eight years. And ultimately what happened from abroad, dumping steel into this country, led to some 40 different steel mills being closed.”
— Romney
Steel dumping was certainly a factor, but former workers told the local media that Bain Capital’s management practices left the company in a weakened state and less able to compete with overseas steel producers.
“We’ve got a president in office three years, and he does not have a jobs plan yet.”
— Romney
This is a strange comment, given that President Obama has just spent several months demanding that Congress pass his jobs plan.
“The most extraordinary thing that’s happened with this military authorization is the president’s planning on cutting a trillion dollars out of military spending.”
— Romney
Romney failed to mention that this figure is the result of a budget deal reached with Republican leaders — and that Obama has said he will seek to achieve the required deficit reduction though other means (ie. higher taxes).
“But don’t forget who it was that cut Medicare by $500 billion. And that was President Obama, to pay for Obamacare.”
— Romney
As we have explained before, this is technically correct but misleading.
The savings actually are wrung from health-care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries. These spending reductions presumably would be a good thing, since virtually everyone agrees that Medicare spending is out of control.
In the House Republican budget, lawmakers repealed the Obama health care law but retained all but $10 billion of the nearly $500 billion in Medicare savings, suggesting the actual policies enacted to achieve these spending reductions were not that objectionable to GOP lawmakers.
Democrats planning to help Michigan college students
Democrats in the Michigan Senate said Wednesday they're developing a proposal that would allow Michigan high school graduates to get grants of up to roughly $9,500 a year for attending college by ending some business tax credits and other revenue changes.
The grants could be used to pay tuition or associated costs at public universities and community colleges in the state. The money would be raised by closing what Democrats call tax loopholes and ending some business tax credits, collecting sales tax from out-of-state Internet retailers and saving money on state contracts.
The proposals, which could soon be formally introduced in the Senate, likely would face long odds against passing in the Republican-led Legislature...
Republican Michigan State House Representative Gary MacMaster supports union busting statewide Right to Work legislation
One of the largest debates likely to get attention in Lansing in 2012 will be a growing Republican and Tea Party intent to pass Right to Work legislation -- effectively eliminating laws requiring employees to belong to a union as a condition of employment.
MacMaster, a former television meteorologist, supports a statewide Right to Work plan...
Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer says Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson is creating "partisan mischief" by putting President Barack Obama's name on the Feb. 28 presidential primary ballot.
Michigan Democrats plan to nominate their candidate at a May 5 caucus, so votes for Obama in the primary won't count.
The date for presidential primaries was set by Senate Bill 584 and signed into law by Governor Snyder 10/4/11. The bill received no support from Democratic legislators in either the Michigan House or Senate. The date was supported by both our representatives in Lansing: Republican Senator Moolenaar and Republican Representative MacMaster. The date set, the last Tuesday in February, is at odds with both Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) rules, which do not allow a presidential primary in Michigan this early. The penalty for holding a presidential primary this early is forfeiture of half of Michigan's delegates at the national conventions. Senate Bill 584 requires a "closed primary" which means that voters must declare their party before receiving a ballot and this declaration becomes public information. Candidates for other political parties are not on the February 28th ballot because Senate Bill 584 requires that a political party must receive more than 5% of the presidential votes in the previous presidential election to appear on this ballot and no other parties in Michigan met this requirement. $10 million has been budgeted for the Michigan February 28th presidential primary.
Elizabeth Warren quote in article about class warfare
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good for you. But, I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
A Bridge Magazine analysis revealed that student loans at Michigan’s 15 public universities increased an incredible 49 percent in four years. From the 2007 to the 2010 academic year, the annual amount of loans taken out by college students jumped $600 million, reaching $1.8 billion [per year] at the state’s public universities in the 2009-10 academic year, the last year for which data is available from Michigan’s House and Senate fiscal agencies.
The average graduate with a bachelor’s degree left campus in 2010 with $25,675 in student loans, according to the Project on Student Debt. That’s the 11th highest student debt load in the country.
Michigan families already pay more to send their children to state universities than families in almost any other state, according to a Bridge Magazine analysis. Michigan’s “college tax” of exploding student debt has materialized in concert with disinvestment in public funding for Michigan universities and tuition increases that have far outpaced inflation. As Eastern Michigan University President Sue Martin explains, as state budgets tightened, higher education was an easy place to cut because universities had the “safety valve” of tuition to make up for lost state funding. As state funding dropped, tuition rose. And, of course, increased tuition and fees led to increased student loans.
The student debt mountain is made even more treacherous by the interest rates attached to many student loans — rates higher than what you find advertised now for mortgages and car loans. A commercial website, staffordloans.com, quotes a current rate of 6.8 percent on unsubsidized Stafford Loans. That’s 70 percent higher than current 30-year mortgage rates for home buyers with good credit. Student loans also are difficult to abandon; unlike credit card debt, student loans are almost never erased in a bankruptcy. [T]he rule of thumb on student loans is, by the time they are paid off, college grads will have paid double the amount they original borrowed, creating even more of a drag on the Michigan economy.
Twenty years from now, there will be a cascading effect of this debt. Parents won’t have saved for their children’s education because they will still be paying for their own. That will create an acceleration of a loss of affordability.
Cost of Michigan higher education higher than nearly every other state
Caroline Robinson and Barbara Twist are cousins who share far more than bloodlines. They are both seniors in college; each attends one of the top public universities in the nation.
The similarities stop, however, when the tuition bills arrive. Barbara is paying twice as much for her education at the University of Michigan as Caroline must pay at the University of North Carolina.
Michigan families pay more to send their children to state universities than families in almost any other state, according to a Bridge Magazine analysis. Not coincidentally, Michigan also gives less money to its public universities than almost any other state.
“Grand Valley has essentially been privatized,” said Matt McLogan, vice president for university relations at GVSU*. “It’s publicly owned, but is no longer publicly supported in any way that people would recognize.”
In the early 1970s, three-quarters of university funding came from the state and one quarter from tuition. Today, those numbers are reversed.Michigan’s public universities now get a greater share of their funding from tuition than public universities do in 44 other states.
Who can vote in February Michigan Republican primary, 50% delegate forfeiture and $10M cost
On 4 October 2011, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (Republican) signed Senate Bill 0584 into law. The bill moves the Presidential Primary to the 4th Tuesday in February-- 28 February 2012.
State law currently calls for a 28 February 2012 primary. Republican Party rules would require Michigan to forfeit half of its National Convention delegates if the party begins the process of binding National Convention delegates before 6 March 2012.
Any Michigan Republican is eligible to participate in the primary. A registered voter declares her or his party designation by selecting a Republican ballot at the polls. The voter's choice becomes public information.
Mark Brewer, Chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, says the February Michigan Republican primary will cost Michigan taxpayers $10 million. Michigan Democrats will chose their presidential candidate at May 5th caucuses at no expense to taxpayers and this date complies with Democratic National Committee rules. Brewer states --
The Michigan presidential primary is set under existing law for February 28, 2012, a date that is in violation of the rules of both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee (“RNC”). If Michigan Republicans use this February 2012 presidential primary, the RNC automatically will cut the number of delegates from Michigan to the Republican National Convention in half – with absolutely no possibility under RNC rules that these lost delegate positions can be restored.
A 1/10/12 N.H. primary interlude -- How to make a baseball
As for class warfare, it's here. The policies of the past three decades, whether on taxes, de-regulation, outsourcing, the assault on unions, or the deliberate weakening of social insurance, have been top-down class warfare. It's just charming that when progressives begin to show some spine and start fighting back, the Right screams "class warfare!" They should know.
The French have a nice rhyming couplet that describes this gambit: Cet animal est tres mechant; quand on l'attaque, il se defend. ("This animal is very wicked. When you attack it, it defends itself.")
The only thing wrong with Obama's populism, excuse me, his economic progressivism, is that it took him until nearly the year of his re-election to practice it resolutely. More, please.
State Senator Moolenaar supports bill (SB 248) prohibiting expansion of recreation areas in Northern Michigan
You and I are the new, proud owners of 517 acres of rolling hills, forests, cedar swamps and the headwaters of the Black River.
Michigan’s latest land acquisition lies in Charlton Township of Otsego County. Here, at the fringe of the Pigeon River Country State Forest, a once private piece of land has become public, bringing the total acreage of the Pigeon Forest closer to 106,000 state-owned acres — all touching each other in the most contiguous sprawl of state land in the Lower Peninsula.
Hopefully, this latest purchase won’t be the last.
Senate Bill 248, sponsored by Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, would limit purchases to 80 acres or less and cap state land ownership at 4.65 million acres — not much more than the 4.4 million acres it currently owns. Casperson’s idea is to tap the fund to pay for other “resource-based infrastructure” which, in my [DNR fisheries biologist Tim Cwalinski] mind, could mean just about anything. Considering legislators just chopped $1 billion off its budget, that $500 million [trust fund] probably looks pretty nice.
He’s referencing Michigan’s Natural Resources Trust Fund, established solely to buy land or develop state or local recreational areas and funded entirely by mineral leases and royalties — gas and oil revenue, essentially.
Researchers say upward mobility in U.S. less likely than in Canada or Europe
WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.
“Over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an Entitlement Society,” Mitt Romney wrote in USA Today last month. The coming election, Romney told Wall Street Journal editors last month, will be “a very simple choice” between Obama’s “European social democratic” vision and “a merit-based opportunity society — an American-style society — where people earn their rewards based on their education, their work, their willingness to take risks and their dreams.”
Romney’s assertions are the centerpiece of his, and his party’s, critique not just of Obama but of American liberalism generally. But they fail to explain how and why the American economy has declined the past few decades — in good part because they betray no awareness that Europe’s social democracies now fit the description of “merit-based opportunity societies” much more than ours does.
Disposing of unused prescription pills is easy in Otsego County
1/2/12 GAYLORD
Are unused prescription drugs tempting to people in your house? Are they an attraction to criminals? Are they an environmental hazard if they're flushed or put in the trash? Is someone going through your trash looking for drugs?
We sometimes don't know the answer to these questions, but we don't need to know, if, we dispose of unused drugs at the Otsego County Sheriff Department.
It's easy to do. Walk in the door near the pavillion in Gaylord. Give your pills (liquids not accpepted) to the deputy on duty. There's a metal trash can near the counter with a funnel inserted in a hole in the can's locked lid. The deputy dumps the pills in the funnel, hands you back the empty bottles and wishes you a fine day. It's that easy and takes less than a minute. The sheriff turns the drugs over to the DEA for disposal.
Biggest threat to middle class: the over-class or underclass?
The middle class looks nervously up, then down. Which is the greater economic threat, the overclass or the underclass? Perceived answers to this question now shape political allegiances in the United States.
Those on the left argue that the overclass threatens the country’s well-being, while those on the right point their fingers at the underclass. President Obama wants to raise taxes on millionaires; Republicans want to cut social programs directed at the poor.
Congressmens' wealth and life in Washington D.C. distorts their view of constituents
Last week, both The Washington Post and The Times published illuminating stories on the growing affluence of members of Congress. Both stories — Peter Whoriskey’s in the Post and Eric Lichtblau’s in the Times — demonstrate how the economic fortunes of those elected to Congress have diverged radically from those of the men and women they represent.
The distortion of economic and racial reality for members of Congress living and working in Washington contributes to their tendency to view the consequences of budget cuts and austerity measures as affecting primarily individuals and families with whom they believe they have little in common. They often see or choose to see these people as separate and apart from both themselves and from the mainstream of the United States.
XL Pipeline vs. conservation and alternative energy development
The Republicans believe they have President Obama in a box: either he approves a controversial Canadian oil pipeline or they accuse him of depriving the nation of jobs. Mr. Obama can and should push back hard.
This is precisely the moment for him to argue the case for alternative fuel sources and clean energy jobs — and to lambaste the Republicans for doubling down on conventional fuels while ceding a $5 trillion global clean technology market (and the jobs that go with it) to more aggressive competitors like China and Germany.
The Republicans’ claim that the pipeline will create tens of thousands of new jobs — 20,000 according to House Speaker John Boehner and 100,000 according to Jon Huntsman — are wildly inflated. A more accurate forecast from the federal government, one with which TransCanada, the pipeline company, agrees, says the project would create 6,000 to 6,500 temporary construction jobs at best, for two years.
So yes, debt matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap. And the wrongheaded, ill-informed obsession with debt is standing in the way.
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