Archive for November, 2011

Robert Laurie

The Detroit City Council has been busy.  First, it enacted an oh-so-important anti-bullying ordinance.  Later, it held a secret meeting to discuss the city’s impending financial apocalypse.  Then, it passed a resolution allowing the “Occupy” protesters to hold onto their precious tent city for one more week.  Finally, fearing that it would be eliminated when the state took over the city’s fiscal difficulties, it decided to work through the holidays in an effort to prevent the aforementioned doom.

It’s nice to know that it managed to find time, between bullies and occupiers, to deal with the economy, even if its real goal seems to be self-preservation.

The secret meeting was the direct result of a new economic audit, funded by the city’s taxpayers, which finds that Detroit will be completely broke by April of next year.  Keep in mind, we’re not talking about the “deficit spending” kind of broke.  This is the unequivocally destitute kind of poverty that will render the city unable to pay its employees or meet its debts.  Mayor Bing has floated the idea of privatizing city services and eliminating 2,200 jobs in order to free up money.  Unfortunately, this would only delay the inevitable, pushing the implosion back to mid-July.

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David Karki

The U.S. Supreme Court will be taking on the lawsuit filed by more than two dozen state attorneys general to stop Obamacare from being implemented. Oral arguments will take place over the winter, and a decision released in late spring that will have a large impact on a presidential election that will be in full swing by then.  Should Obamacare be ruled unconstitutional, it will be a major body blow to Obama’s re-election chances.

Perhaps that’s why Obama and the left are doing their level best to stack the panel and rig the outcome.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was appointed by Obama and was formerly his Solicitor General. Her job responsibility was to represent the administration in any court proceedings in which the federal government was a party to the case. Often, this entails anticipating legal challenges to the implementation of legislation, executive branch regulations and executive orders.

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James Melton

If some of the latest thinking in physics is correct, there very well could be an alternative universe in which the federal government did not step in to rescue General Motors and Chrysler after the 2008 financial collapse.

Perhaps, in that alternative universe, Alternative Barack Obama lost the 2008 election to Alternative John McCain. Or, maybe, Alternative Obama simply chickened out of forceful intervention to rescue two-thirds of the Alternative Detroit Three.

Whatever the reason for the inaction, we can all be glad we’re not living in Alternative Michigan – where the Renaissance Center in the Alternative Detroit, the GM Tech Center in Alternative Warren, and Chrysler’s headquarters in Alternative Auburn Hills are vacant and a lot of factories have gone idle. Such a place is bound to have unemployment that rivals or exceeds levels seen during the Great Depression. It also is, no doubt, a powder keg for social unrest as mass joblessness and despair take their toll on the social fabric of the entire state.

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Brett Noel

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Eric Baerren

It would be simple, and fun, to accuse the state Senate of being filled with pocket edition authoritarians who cloak their desire to control people in the American flag. But probably not accurate.

Let’s back up a second. Last week, the Senate dusted off an age-old fight over turning schools into indoctrination centers. At first, Sen. Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw) sponsored a bill requiring children in schools that receive public money to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, probably after someone pointed out to him that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly 70 years ago – while the nation was in the middle of a worldwide war the outcome of which was still in doubt – that schools couldn’t compel children to take morning loyalty oaths masked as the Pledge. So the language was altered, and now children can opt out if they have a note from home.

The truth is that this probably has less to do with promoting a mild form of state worship, and a lot more to do with something for which this Legislature has become legend – authoring and passing legislation for which there is very little evidence that anyone thought through what it meant. This is the same august body that just the week before passed legislation intended to compel school districts to adopt bullying policies that left a giant gap suggesting it was OK if the alleged bully could say, “Hey, I was just trying to save that other kid’s soul.”

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Dan Calabrese

I am a Republican candidate for president of the United States.

OK. No I’m not. I’m actually just some guy sitting around at the Y, watching a fat guy shoot baskets, which is not very presidential behavior. (The fat guy actually has a pretty sweet jumper. How come the fat guys in the NBA can never shoot? But I digress . . .)

But if I were a Republican running for president, I would presumably have a problem with Michigan. Not that the Great Lakes State isn’t primed to turn red, as we saw in the 2010 mid-terms, but no one seeking to oust Barack Obama can get too far from the matter of the automotive bailout, which Obama ultimately approved, and which a Republican president presumably would have opposed (even though it wouldn’t have happened without George W. Bush snatching TARP funds for it, but never mind actual history).

I get it. As the doctrinaire capitalist, how exactly do I explain why the many Michiganians who depend on the automakers and their suppliers for jobs, retirement benefits and tax base for their communities should put me in the White House?

So I patiently listen as the preening, self-important journalist asks me that very question, and then I look to my left at Ron Paul, who suggests, “The EPA?”

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Jocelyn Benson

Imagine going to the polls on Election Day to vote in your city election, only to be told essentially that your vote for mayor will likely not matter – because a state authority is going to overrule it by appointing an emergency financial manager to take over the city.

That is exactly what happened last week in Flint, when state officials announced on Election Day that they would likely appoint an emergency manager to oversee Flint’s finances after declaring a financial emergency in the city.

Reforms that promote accountability and transparency from our public officials can change government for the better, particularly when they improve the efficient and cost-effective delivery of government services.  But the recent changes to Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager law, increasing the powers of state appointees at the expense of locally elected officials, take us further away from the democratic ideals embedded in the U.S. and Michigan constitutions.

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Herman Cain

Perhaps you have heard that the so-called congressional “supercommittee” is charged with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit-reduction savings (over a decade, mind you) by the Friday after Thanksgiving. If they fail to do so, according to the recent debt-ceiling compromise, automatic across-the-board cuts will kick in.

It’s very unlikely the “supercommittee” will achieve anything meaningful with respect to budget discipline. While there are many reasons for this, the biggest is the lack of presidential leadership.

President Obama has never demonstrated even a morsel of understanding about how far beyond its means the federal government is living. Consider: A president who touts $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years as some sort of major achievement thought nothing of perpetrating an $862 billion “stimulus” package just months after taking office. And when it didn’t stimulate a thing in terms of economic growth, this same president came back and asked Congress for another spending extravaganza worth more than $400 billion.

There’s your $1.2 trillion in savings, wiped out not in a single bound, but in two of them. Super, indeed.

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Jake Davison

Keweenaw County: population 2,305. Bois Blanc Pines School District: population 63. Pointe Aux Barques Township: population 10. That’s right, T-E-N.

Can you believe Michigan has 420 school districts and 1,350 townships, cities and villages? Don’t, because it’s untrue. Michigan has 33 percent more local governments than that. We can boast about a grand total of 2,468 local governments, and that’s only counting school districts, intermediate school districts, townships, cities, villages and counties. That’s one major unit of local government for every 4,148 Michiganians.

Reducing the number of each type of local government by 15 percent sounds drastic. But by forcing the consolidation of the smallest units, the smallest township would be Cleveland Township in Leelanau County at 1,040. That’s still pretty damn small.

How are we supposed to think in terms of local economies when we think in terms of true local areas, such as media markets and urban/suburban areas, at a sub-state level? And think of the greater purchasing power of these less tiny governments.

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Dan Calabrese

As I watched Herman Cain’s press conference on Tuesday – his denial of the allegations against him so complete, so uncompromising, so unqualified in every way – it occurred to me that this was one of those propositions that can only be one of two things.

Either all the charges against him are bogus, or he is a pathological liar. There are no other possibilities.

I have known Herman Cain since 2006, when he signed with North Star Writers Group as a syndicated columnist. I have been his syndicator and his editor ever since. We usually talk – at least by e-mail, usually by phone as well – once a week. I’ve spent time with him in Atlanta. I was one of the first people he informed of his cancer diagnosis some years back.

So unlike a lot of political pundits who presume to discern things about Herman’s character, I know the man, which is why I tell you this with complete confidence:

Herman Cain is not a liar.

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