Tag: Granholm-Cherry (page 2)

Casualties of executive order budget cuts from the Granholm-Cherry administration, the troopers this week begin hunting for new jobs and new ways to provide for their families.  

Though it would take a cynic's cynic to argue that the Democratic Governor and Lieutenant Governor explicitly enjoyed firing law enforcement officers it would also take the most stalwart Lefty loyalist to brush aside the majority Party's woefully misplaced spending priorities as anything less than highly questionable.  Especially in light of the fact that major tax dollars are being funneled away from law enforcement and into the pockets of Democrat donor and real estate developer Joel Ferguson.  

At issue now as it was two years ago is the so-called Triangle Project, a new $117 million Michigan State Police Headquarters being constructed in downtown Lansing.  MSP doesn't want the new HQ, a building that is prohibitively smaller than their current base of operations a few miles away (and currently being leased for the paltry sum of $1 a year).  

If anything, it is being argued, the speed and quality of service will actually decrease at the new development thanks in large part to the fact that various operations currently being handled under one roof in East Lansing will have to be split amongst multiple buildings after moving to downtown Lansing.  Then there's the rather large matter of those 100 suddenly unemployed police officers.  The $117 million being wasted on an unwanted, inefficient development represents enough taxpayer appropriations to keep 100 troopers on the street for years.  Or enough taxpayer appropriations to make Ferguson a significantly wealthier man.

Last week the Republican led Senate held a vote to cancel the Triangle Project and protect the law enforcement officers who lost their jobs this week. Senate Democrats objected, voted against the troopers and tried to save Ferguson's money pit.  Plaster and mortar over moms and dads?  The anti-cop move makes very little sense on it's face.  Until you take a bit of time tested advice and "follow the money."

Joel Ferguson has a long and distinguished history of big dollar giving to Democrats and Lefty organizations.  From judicial candidates to the Michigan House Democrat Fund and others, Democrats can often count on thousands of dollars from the developer.  Tens of thousands, even.  

Serious questions created by a serious bit of... pure, unadulterated lunacy... coming out of the Granholm-Cherry administration.  Yesterday 100 state police troopers lost their jobs on orders from the Governor and her 2010 Gubernatorial candidate.  Last week Lansing Democrats fought to keep alive the administration's dream for a new, inefficient, hundred million dollar state police headquarters that the state police don't want.  Meanwhile, this year alone, 3,500 dangerous convicted felons are being released EARLY from prison and set loose in Michigan neighborhoods.

So what's a state to do with fewer cops walking the beat, more law enforcement dollars swallowed up paying to provide pet projects (and big paydays) to Democratic donors / developers and a sudden spike in the number of dangerous career criminals prowling the streets?

Import more criminals.  From California.  

Import.  Criminals.  From California.

Who came up with this idea, Lex Luthor?  Norman Osborn?  The Joker?  No, no and, well...

According to Booth Newspapers, this one is the brainchild of the Granholm-Cherry team.  

California has too many prisoners and Michigan soon will have too many empty prison cells.

Therein lies the possibility of a "mutually beneficial partnership," Gov. Jennifer Granholm told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a letter Monday...

In her letter, Granholm referenced earlier conversations with Schwarzenegger in which she said Michigan "could be of help."

Granholm said she was "certain that Michigan can provide a safe and secure environment for prisoners and help prepare them for a return to California and a crime-free lifestyle."

What's worse, this can't even be chocked up as an outside-the-box scheme to generate extra revenue for the state.  According to Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan, "we're not looking to make any money off this."  

Marlan said in regards to the California offer, Michigan would be seeking mainly to recover labor, food and health care costs.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  The administration has already crippled our economy, swelled the ranks of the unemployed to record levels, put a nearly unbearable strain on the state's social services and grown the size of the Lansing bureaucracy to astronomical proportions (the budget has grown by nearly $6 billion since Granholm and Cherry took their oaths of office in January 2003).  Suppose it was only a matter of time before they tried turning Michigan into a penal colony.

Plus, look at it this way... importing hardened criminals is ONE way of countering the dramatic outbound population flight we've seen the last six years.  Better yet, unlike hardworking Michigan families who've just plain had enough, Californian prisoners couldn't leave, even if they wanted to.

Going through the recorded roll-call vote something more than the Left's chronic trouble with intellectual consistency stuck out with a sore thumb. One member of the Democratic caucus with a particular rooting interest in this fight declined the opportunity to cast a vote.

Mike Huckleberry isn't just a freshman Dem legislator, he is also a restaurant owner. A ban on smoking in bars and restaurants would directly affect his own ability to draw a dinner crowd and maintain his non-legislative livelihood amid the ever-worsening Granholm-Cherry economic crisis.

So why no vote, instead of a no vote? Read on...

The Democrats have arbitrarily agreed to mandate an increase in fuel economy standards that will add $1,300 to the up-front cost of every vehicle produced in Michigan.  (As Jacob points out in BofB, the cost is likely to end up being much higher.)  That's one mighty push in the back while two of the Big 3 are bankrupt and essentially stand on the edge of insolvency.

Granholm, Cherry and President Obama are taking the nation's most fragile industry, an industry that is having an impossible time selling her product and in one fell swoop DRAMATICALY increased the barriers standing between cash-strapped consumers and the purchase of a new automobile.  

Add to that this morning the news that the Feds are preparing to essentially buy GMAC via a fresh $7.5 billion "stimulus" that grants the government control of the financing giant and that General Motors is sliding faster and faster towards it's own personal Armageddon complete with total government control and the news couldn't get much bleaker for struggling Michigan families and the folks stuck in an unemployment line that stopped moving years ago.

And no one has even mentioned those proverbial spin-off jobs.  At least not until this morning.  The Ivory Tower covers the angle and reminds folks, fuel efficiency requires light-weight parts and technology that does not yet exist as it eventually must.  R & D and dramatic changes in production come with a cost and require significant cash investment that hasn't yet materialized.  Additional thousands of jobs are this morning at risk in new and scary ways.

The new standards come at a time when suppliers are cutting their staffs to stay afloat and doing their best to maintain their budgets for research and development.

"The first thing we need to do in this country is to get auto sales back up to a level where we have sufficient cash and profitability in the supply sector so we can afford to make these moves to more fuel-efficient engines," said Jim Gillette, director of financial services at CSM Worldwide...

Parts makers have the technology to meet these new standards, Gillette said, but "whether or not they're going to get the financing sources to expand to meet the production requirements is another question."

C'mon, Mr. Gillette, that's what Uncle Sam is for.  And if the Democrats don't like YOUR particular supplier they'll just let you and your jobs die while they funnel billions in "free money" to your competitors.  That's the new American way.

Jennifer Granholm and John Cherry yesterday sold out Michigan.  I wish there was a more polite way to put it.  They stood by and nodded their heads in approval while the federal government lined up the state's biggest industry against a massive firing squad of new regulations and bureaucratic price gouging.  Might as well have pulled the trigger themselves.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA) programs don't work and the Granholm-Cherry administration knew it.  That hasn't stopped them from showing up at press conference after press conference dating back to their reelection bid in 2005, though, and claiming credit for the creation of new jobs they KNEW, empirically, would never be created.

The Ivory Tower reported over the weekend that only 67,000 jobs have been created or retained by the state's big economic development programs in the last fourteen years.  To say that's a drop in the bucket compared to what Granholm and Cherry have promised unemployed voters at their many photo-ops would belittle drops in buckets.  

Last month on the Bloggers' Edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick the Regressisphere's greatest champion, Liberal Lucy, parroted the administration's line (that's what she does best) and claimed that their job creation efforts (those are, specifically, the MEDC and MEGA, kids) had actually created or retained 700,000 jobs.

700,000 in promises over six years.  That's an average of 116,667 jobs promised every year.   67,000 in results over fourteen comes out to an average of 4,786 per year.  In other words, the administration typically promises more than 24 TIMES what they know, historically, they're going to be able to deliver.

Fourteen years establishes what the experts refer to as a "track record." Despite platitudes and promises of future successes, the administration had reports and facts and figures that indicated most companies that were granted breaks and preferential treatment by the MEDC and via MEGA wound up declining to take advantage of the tax breaks because Michigan's job creation environment was still too turbulent for expansion, or even survival.

Politicians lie to voters.  Integrity is far too rare in "public servants."  But knowingly and willfully lying to unemployed workers about job creation prospects?  That's cruel, that's callous and it just plain isn't funny.

Who'd have ever thunk, for instance, that in the middle of May, well after the emergence of spring and the not-uncommon 70 degree day, with the planet dying and temperatures soaring while the sun turns the surface into a George Foreman grill, melts ice caps and roasts polar bears in their fur, Michigan's LOWER peninsula would suddenly find itself facing a FREEZE warning that threatens to devastate crops.  The Associated Press sounds the alarm!

Summer may be just six weeks away, but the northern half of Michigan's Lower Peninsula faces the threat of a hard freeze that could kill crops and early-season plants.

The National Weather Service has issued a freeze warning from midnight to 8 a.m. Monday for northwest Lower Michigan and from 2-8 a.m. for northeast Lower Michigan and the Thumb. Frost and subfreezing temperatures are expected in the region lying north of Interstate 96.

Brrrr.  Michigan hasn't gotten that cold a reception since the auto execs asked Congress for federal stimulus funding.  (*RIMSHOT* C'mon... that was awesome, wasn't it?)

Oh, and the bailout cash that they finally did convince the Democrats to funnel into the Motor City?  Too little too late.  

Read on...

In any other state, that sort of paragraph could either be really great news or a portent of something down right rotten.  In a state governed by the Granholm - Cherry administration for the better part of a decade we tend to lose that first option pretty quickly.  Sure enough...

Michigan's population is dwindling, and fast.  We knew that.  We learn each year that we lead the nation in outbound moves.  United Van Lines doesn't mean to punch us in the gut, they're just reporting their own numbers, but it happens again and again.  

Since 2001, migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of the combined populations of Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights -- the state's second-, third- and fourth-largest cities.

Population loss of that magnitude is so rare that its impact has never been studied. But The News' analysis discovered some sobering trends:

Those leaving Michigan are the people the state most needs to keep -- young and college-educated. The state suffered a net loss to migration of 18,000 adults with a bachelor's degree or higher in 2007 alone -- the equivalent of half the staff of the University of Michigan crossing the state line.

In other words, those jobs of tomorrow and that whole diversification of the economy that the administration has been trying to engineer via tax increases, increased regulation and more overseas family vacations than you can shake a stick at just plain hasn't materialized.  To the contrary... the folks who aren't working are multiplying and staying put while folks who already HAVE jobs are beating feet and making a mad dash for the Indiana border (I refuse to entertain the notion any of them exit via Ohio).

Read on...

--Lieutenant Governor John Cherry, Ivory Tower, January 14, 2009

Governor Jennifer Granholm has "laid a strong groundwork for the state's future, and he'll be happy to run on the Democratic governor's record," according to January 14th's Ivory Tower article succinctly titled - Cherry: I'll run on Granholm's record

Never let it be said that RightMichigan isn't interested in helping Democrats keep their campaign promises!  

To that end, and in the interest of ensuring no one ever gets confused or creative with the details of the Granholm-Cherry record, we're going to start keeping a running record-sheet of the various headlines said record generates.

See?  Helpful.  My middle name.  

So without further ado... you can check out the record John Cherry says he's proud to run on, starting with just a small sampling of recent mainstream media accounts: