Archive for December, 2011

Herman Cain

You would think an election year would be the ideal time to have a serious discussion about the nation’s problems, and about how we are going to solve them. After all, voters should demand that any candidate who wants to become president should clearly identify the nation’s priorities, and explain his or her approach to solving them.

Instead, most of the media attention focuses on the latest story directing attention away from the many failures of the current president and his administration, or on what a candidate said or did years ago, or, a debate or interview gaffe.

We already know that President Obama will be the Democrat nominee. That gives him a major head start over his Republican challengers, which presents the perfect opportunity for him to lay out his solutions for our nation’s economic and fiscal crises, its energy challenges and its national security priorities.

Instead, what is he talking about? He is focused on the extension of a temporary payroll tax cut, which does have some small merit as a short-term measure, but does not represent a comprehensive solution to the nation’s muddled tax code or its critical need for economic growth.

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Jake Davison

After 16 years, the cap on charter schools is dead. As I write this, Gov. Snyder is signing the bill into law that will sentence the cap to the ash heap of history in 90 days. That will make March 24, 2012 a glorious date in state history.

Sadly, 49 of Michigan’s 110 state representatives and 16 of its 38 state senators voted to keep children locked in schools for no other reason than to maintain the Michigan Education Association’s near-monopoly on the state’s most important industry. In the House, only one of the 43 Democrats voted for parental and child freedom. None voted for it in the Senate.

So what does this mean for Michigan, parents and students? It means that as soon as August, thousands of children on the waiting list to get out of the MEA’s mediocrity machine will have that chance. Some opponents of this Emancipation Proclamation claimed they were not necessarily against charters, but only open to them as competition for “failing schools.” According to them, if your local traditional public school isn’t a complete basket case like Detroit Public Schools, the ambition of you and your child to get the best possible education isn’t as important as maintaining the teacher union’s plantation.

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Gregory D. Lee

Eric Holder’s U.S. Department of Justice Civil Division has released the findings of its three-year witch hunt of America’s most popular and effective sheriff, Joe Arpaio, of Maricopa County, Arizona.

Among the findings were that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) used “racial profiling” in traffic stops, and that a Latino was “four to nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maricopa County has a population of 3.8 million residents, which is over half of all Arizona residents. Of that number, 29.6 percent are persons of Hispanic or Latino origin. By virtue of numbers, Latinos have a one-in-three chance of being pulled over for a traffic violation, regardless of the “situation.”

Further, I’ve never seen a black illegal Mexican alien or one that looked like he was born in China.

Throughout the Justice Department’s report of findings, the words “illegal alien” could be substituted easily for “Latino” because this is what it is all about. Holder’s headhunters are trying to intimidate Sheriff Arpaio and other border state law enforcement officials to back off from enforcing federal immigration laws.

The truth is that by virtue of location, Arizona, and Maricopa County in particular, have been plagued by illegal Mexicans. Citizen complaints and aggressive law enforcement have led to the arrest and deportation of thousands of illegal aliens. This is something Holder’s Department of Justice aims to stop, especially in light of being within a year of a presidential election.

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Dan Calabrese

The difficult question when wrestling with Michigan’s Emergency Financial Manager law is this: It is troubling that the decisions made by local citizens are essentially trumped by the governor, who sends someone in from the outside to overrule every decision local officials have made about how they will handle the city’s finances.

That bothers me. It bothers a lot of people.

But the governor was elected too, and it’s also his responsibility to look out for the taxpayers in every one of our state’s cities. So when local officials show themselves to be so irresponsible that there is simply no one else to represent the interests of the taxpayers, maybe they should be grateful the governor is willing to act on their behalf.

The Detroit City Council’s refusal to make a reasonable cut to its own budget, at a time when the city is just months away from complete fiscal oblivion, presents one such conundrum.

Granted, the budget of the City Council is nowhere near the biggest part of Detroit’s woes. You could cut the Council’s budget to zero and Detroit would still be on the brink of fiscal oblivion if it can’t shed legacy costs born of the contracts it negotiated with its 48 employee unions.

But when you find yourself in a fiscal crisis – a word that hardly seems to cut it here – you can only solve the problem by making adjustments anywhere and everywhere you can. You don’t make a choice between large cuts and smaller ones. You make them all. And that’s because your only way out of this mess is to change the way you think – and apply your newfound sanity across the board.

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Robert Laurie

I’m here to report that I survived childhood with 10 toes and all 10 of my fingers. You should also know that I maintain the proper number of limbs, bear no major scarring, and my eyes are intact.

This may not seem like a big deal, but, believe me, it is. You see, despite living in a state that had banned explosive fireworks, my father was undeterred. He committed the unthinkable act of supplying my Lexington-based youth with a steady stream of buckeye explosives.

Now Gov. Snyder has realized what everyone else already knew: Michigan’s fireworks ban was a worthless, easily circumvented law that sent money to Ohio while accomplishing nothing. This week, Snyder did the right thing. He signed a bill allowing the sale of louder, more powerful fireworks within Michigan’s borders.

Detractors, killjoys and nanny-staters have taken to the airwaves, using the mainstream Michigan media to whine about the dangers these devices pose. If they’re to be believed, next summer our state is going to look like a snapshot of World War I trench warfare – only louder and more colorful. Our emergency rooms will be bursting at the seams with screaming, mutilated children. There’s a good chance that, thanks to Snyder, none of us will survive.

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David Karki

The election of 2012 will, in effect, call the American people to account and give us one last chance to arrest the otherwise inexorable march to cultural and economic Marxism that has been ongoing for the last century. We can no longer afford to indulge such wrong and, yes, evil ideas that are the antithesis of the Constitutional republic the Founders bequeathed us.

We have reached the point famously described by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:  where socialism inevitably runs out of other people’s money. Not that socialism’s believers ever consider it that, of course; they think all money belongs to government – which is to say, them – and that only they in their infinite and superior wisdom can ensure it is distributed properly. This lie is the same appeal to egotism that the serpent used in the Garden of Eden in order to sucker Eve into eating the fruit: “Ye shall be as God.”

For a century now, we have indulged this wrong-headed thinking on a societal scale, thinking that a governing philosophy that comes from a secular, humanist worldview which depends upon force and control could somehow be compatible with one that comes from a judeo-christian worldview which relies upon personal liberty, freedom and moral self-restraint.

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James Melton

The unemployment rate in Michigan is 10.6 percent. So, can anybody explain to me why some Michigan politicians think attacking the gay community should be a priority?

As Michigan works to claw itself out of the hole it fell into during the greatest recession since the Great Depression, some of our state and local officeholders want to send the world a message. That message is that Michigan is open for business, we want your investment dollars and your 21^st century jobs and, oh yes … one more thing: We’re pretty darned intolerant when it comes to gay people.

Late last week, state legislators sent Gov. Rick Snyder a bill that would ban domestic partner benefits for unmarried public employees in the state. The bill would affect the live-in partners of all unmarried employees, straight or gay. But the main targets are homosexual couples who are not only unmarried, but unlikely to get married any time soon, thanks to a constitutional amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004.

Snyder – who is smart enough to know what kind of message this kind of legislation sends to the world – is expected to sign the bill anyway, after a review period.

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has said she fully expects the university to lose employees over this if the bill is deemed to apply to state universities. In a statement Coleman issued prior to the bill’s passage, she wrote “employees currently responsible for providing health coverage for their families may well leave, and other top candidates will choose not to come.”

This action is bad enough on its own. But the measure was not passed in a vacuum. It is happening within the context of a nonsensical culture war we really don’t need to have.

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Brett Noel

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Eric Baerren

The governor, bless his heart, campaigned for the job of telling everyone that he wasn’t interested in social issues. His focus was on fixing Michigan’s budget process and making changes so that the state could prosper. He projected an image of excellence, that a state long mired in recession and sadness would not just once again thrive but be a shining example. Rick Snyder’s Michigan would once again be a place envied by people who don’t live here.

His economic message is predicated on talent. That would be people, for those uninitiated with economic development buzzwords. The key to economic vitality in today’s economy is making the state attractive to talented, creative people. In one of his special messages to the Legislature, he very pointedly said so. People who do economic development for a living found his remarks about talent to be refreshing, and said no other governor in the republic sounds so attuned to what really drives today’s economy.

Attracting talent is all about inclusion, making outsiders feel welcome. You let them know that if they bring their skills and creative abilities here, they will be rewarded with a place that lets them live according to their customs and identity in comfort. To this, Snyder has talked about the need to make Michigan welcoming for immigrants, especially those with entrepreneurial aptitudes and a desire to work hard.

And so strikes a tone of discordance on the issue of inclusion. He likes to talk about it in roundabout ways, but the issue comes with a lot of baggage – baggage he’s ignored since becoming governor. Turns out that there are a lot of people who aren’t so hot on inclusion, and many of them are in his own party. In fact, the Legislature he was handed is practically the biggest enemy to inclusion in the state.

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Dan Calabrese

It would really be a shame if Michigan Republicans – having won complete control of state government and a golden opportunity to re-shape the state’s economic policies – instead wasted all their political capital on social nonsense.

Worse yet would be if they perpetrated this idiocy, and further eroded their credibility by thinly claiming they were doing it as a money-saving measure.

But that’s exactly what they’re doing.

On a mostly party-line vote, the Legislature has passed a ban on the extension of employee benefits to unmarried “domestic partners” of public employees. Let’s put that in plain, if un-PC, English: If you’re shacking up, you don’t get added to the benefit package. And if you’re gay – since it’s not legal in Michigan for you to marry your same-sex significant other – you’re out of luck too.

This, according to bill sponsor State Rep. Dave Agema (R-Grandville, and also my representative), is designed to save the state money, because benefits are expensive. And yes they are, which is why it makes sense to devise a strategy that significantly cuts into the cost of providing them.

This isn’t it.

The state has more than 33,000 employees. Last year – the first year it was possible for employees to sign up their “domestic partners” for benefits, a whopping 138 did so. So if you’re looking for savings, keep looking.

Actually, I’ll tell you where to look. At major Michigan universities, more than 2,000 employees have signed up their “domestic partners” for employee benefits in the decade or so since they’ve been offered. So there’s some savings!

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