Tag: Cronyism (page 2)

The financing by shadow entities wouldn't matter a whit if the negative effect on our personal liberties by government action wasn't a risk. Isn't that the truly scary thing, that someone could literally buy an effect on your freedom, promote higher taxes for corporate, or individual welfare, advocate laws stealing property rights, or elect someone to see that you pay for another person's healthcare and personal 'choices?' (abortion, body mutilation, tatoos, sexual deviancy, etc.)

If we could stop such things as MEDC or other subsidy programming, complete streets, pure Michigan taxpayer subsidized cronyism, unchecked welfare, forced medical issues, controls on private business, and apply free market principles along with a consumption based (fair tax) revenue system, it wouldn't be so important to have great amounts of money spent to drive opinion. The need for some 'free speech' anonymity would be reduced or eliminated,

.. and the argument made moot.

I want to know who is coming for our liberty, and would like to celebrate those who would keep us free.  I want to know who is attempting to cage us in and applaud those tearing down the walls. It would be nice to have a motivational perspective on why any issue is important enough to spend massive amounts of money to promote.

In the end, SB661 will pass.  The house will possibly restore the struck out lines that allow funding from political party sources in contested primaries as a compromise. What I would like to see will not happen. Government is probably recognized appropriately as having too much power by enough legislators to stop it its passage, but it won't happen.  Some of those who agree with my view on transparency will still vote for it because they will be convinced that power of government can be turned on those (perhaps appropriately) who would challenge its subjective benevolence all too easily.

The unapologetic praise for a system that holds no chance of meeting promises made and already broken, is continuing unabated. The use of the term Obamacare as an endearing term, instead of the official title "Affordable Care Act." Appropriately connecting the dots from Obamacare to Medicaid expansion; a feat that be performed only with enablers and collaborators in our State Senate and House. When the bleeding edge of the socialist/fascist movement in this country praises our governor for expanding welfare; a move that promises to explode in our face in 3 years time?

Yet losing the seat to a Democrat is the fear that would keep cowardly Republicans voting for Rick Snyder?

It starts off:

The chamber's Board of Directors decided to back the district's millage proposals Tuesday morning.

"It was the board's consensus that strong schools are an integral component of successful communities -- communities that retain and attract talent, jobs, and investment," Doug Luciani, the chamber's president and CEO, stated in an email to TCAPS officials.

The article which spawned the headline touches on the example of the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce, and its support last year of a $100,000,000.00 boondoggle, and even more easily this year's reduced ($47,000,000.00 total) offering.  It supports putting more of a burden on its members and those who bear the increasing liability of property ownership.

taxable properties the school receives funding from has several classifications.

• Agricultural
  
• Commercial
  
• Industrial
  
• Residential
  
• Personal Property Classification from Commercial, Industrial, and Utilities.

Remember those numbers highlighted above.

The MEDC, under pressure to show successes is feeling the heat as it reports little to no success for all the money taxpayers have ponied up over the years.  But hey, as Beck says: "Things are gonna change, I can feel it."  The Cap Con reports

"Michael Finney says the Michigan Economic Development Corp. has turned over a new leaf.

"Gone are wild bets on unproven technologies," the president and CEO of the quasi-governmental and private entity said in a recent press release.

Finney's comments came in response to what he called, "overheated news reports," of an Auditor General report that said only 19 percent of the original jobs projected by the MEDC came to fruition. Finney said that the report also concluded the program was "effective."

Those of you who know me, might have heard the ads I ran for the 104th district State rep seat.  Running against one of the biggest supporters of crony capitalism Wayne Schmidt, I felt it might make a difference to talk about that particular blight on public service.  The ads said:

"My family and I have taken our share of risks pursuing independence and prosperity for over 15 years. Our business has had good and bad years, yet throughout it, we've never asked, nor expected the government to make it any easier through grants or incentives like the ones given to those favored by Lansing's elite.

Yet we still pay for those incentives. And so do you.

In fact, our incumbent representative recently expanded those incentive gimmicks with HB5477, costing us even more.

Picking of winners and losers continues in Lansing, yet the chosen winners often fail. And what the the bureaucrats risk, is not their own paycheck, but ours

Its time to stop this practice of political constituency. Its time to send a champion to fight for you in Lansing, to challenge the increasing bureaucratic mess that threatens our very liberty. To stop political reward schemes, and pandering to those who would bankrupt the state's ability to pay its bills."

Unfortunately, I was not successful, and Michigan was rewarded with a third term of pale pastels in Republicanism from the North, expanded medicaid dependency, and implementation of Obamacare in Michigan. One vote perhaps not enough to stop it all, but one that would have ended an incumbency and sent a message.

Ask yourself why certain politicians; Snyder, Schauer, etc.. have such difficulty revealing their donors.

Could it be those donors are the same people?

In the side twitter bar the question

"What? After paying for #AFP/#RTW #Tentgate 2012 Dick DeVos' Greg McNeilly now anti-#MITeaParty?"

appears.

Having been a part of the RTW/FTW effort, I must say I was quite pleased with the impetus placed on FTW in Dec 2012 by Dick DeVos and Ron Weiser, without which, it might never have happened.  But it isn't a free pass for the abuses laid out by operatives of the GOP, and in particular the MiGOP club which doubled down on the national slaparound the tea folk have been getting from media and complicit (Vichy) Republicans.

December 2012 WAS important though. Snyder at the time might have even overcome a bit of the reaction to the Prop 2 debacle by Michigan's labor unions, but a reminder that anything he had done good was outweighed by cronyism, unilateral international transactions, and the promise of tax increases that moved him.  Truthfully, if not for Weiser and DeVos RTW might never have come to be.  It never was a part of Rick Snyder's agenda, and never really will be heart-fought from ongoing union boss opposition.

Remember that.

Something those two saw that the governor could care less about, was the strength of the Tea party movement within the GOP construct.  There was a very real possibility that the governor, sans a significant policy delivery to the base, would face a primary challenge (perhaps by the sitting AG) thus creating a divide in the 'acceptable' GOP hierarchy.  The AG, already on record as opposing the Obamacare Exchanges, Medicaid Expansion, and showing significant support among the Tea types worried the power brokers.

And those "wackos" were brought under control, right?

"we ought to be more transparent than we have to be"

How dumb.  Just disclose what you have now and move along.  L. Brooks Patterson doesn't hesitate to name those he shakes down and those buying influence in Oakland County, however, Rick Snyder is above that as if his donors are like Barry's college transcripts.

"I think if you don't release it, it looks like there's something suspicious," Patterson told The News. "We all talk about transparency and we either live it or not."
....

"It's easier to hit your supporters for a donation sometimes, than getting them to donate from their personal account," Patterson said of getting corporate donations made to the fund.

Snyder testified last week in a deposition in Detroit's bankruptcy case that he doesn't know who donates to the fund - an admission that's raised some eyebrows. "It's almost dereliction of duty if he didn't know who the donors were," Robinson said.

Rich Baird testified he didn't know either.  What a pack of lies.  So, what's a Nerd to do?  Naturally, Rick Snyder put's his crony on the public dole with a $40,000 pay raise.  Frilliant!