Bottom Up Politics: Great Lazy Weekend

Carpe Diem: Record High Gas Prices?  We're Still Not Even Close

Core Principles: Tax It and It Will Leave

Michigan Taxes Too Much: Politics or Leadership?

Once you factor in the cousins, the second cousins, the grandkids, the significant others... and who knows who else we wind up with well over one-hundred people splashing around.  Then the fireworks at dusk, the celebration from Washington D.C. on PBS with the music and the pageantry.  Good times.  Makes me think of the Beach Boys.  One of those childhood music / date associations, I guess, that's just stuck after all these years.  

But before any of us start humming "California Girls" we've got to get through the next four days... and tomorrow in particular.  While July 4 may represent parties and fireworks and fun and festivities July 1 has an entirely different connotation in Michigan this year, thanks in part to two big deadlines that key in tomorrow.  

The first we've mentioned before, Tuesday brings with it another spike to the minimum wage.  Great idea, right?  Isn't that something we should be celebrating?  Depends on whether or not you think our current unemployment rate is high enough.  The Ann Arbor News reports:

In particular, businesses in service industries are likely getting hit the hardest, said Todd Anderson, spokesman for the Small Business Association of Michigan. He said members plan to hire fewer workers and use unpaid internships this year. That's bad news in a state with an 8.3 percent jobless rate, he said.

And especially bad when one considers the season.  During the summer the number of folks in the market for a job goes up considerably.  The unemployment rate is a reflection of the total number of jobs available and the number of people looking for those jobs.  

Read on...

It worked in Wayne County.

Well, for a while, anyway. until it got struck down by the courts.

But will this time-honored tactic work in Macomb County?

{Continued below the fold}

Bottom Up Politics: David L. Schulz

Tim Walberg's Blog: American Declaration of Energy Independence

Core Principles: Quote of the Day... But Which One?

The RougBlog: Detroit Schools

It doesn't just create a fresh bureaucracy, it enshrines it in the Constitution

The liberal extremist backers of the RMGN ballot initiative would have you believe their petition decreases the size of government.  Especially interesting considering the fact that portions of the fine print actually expand the size of government.  And it plays partisan games while it's at it.  The language divides in two the responsibilities of the Department of State and creates a brand new bureaucracy along with its subsequent high-dollar, tax-payer funded management team.

Currently the Department of State oversees the Bureau of Elections.  While the Secretary of State is itself a partisan position there is perhaps no department anywhere in Lansing that receives more consistent plaudits than the team at BoE.  They are truly non-partisan and do one heck of a job.  More than that, conventional wisdom holds that most of the folks overseeing operations at BoE are actually Democrats but they are high quality folks with boat loads of integrity doing the tasks prescribed to them by law.  

No longer, under this MDP end-run on the constitution.

One finds on Page 2, Article II, Section 7, Paragraph 2, Line 1 of the petition the official constitutional enshrinement of a new autonomous state department.  Page 2, Article II, Section 7, Paragraph 2, Line 11 establishes the constitutional requirement for the appropriation of taxpayer funds specifically for this new department.  The bureaucrats staffing the new department?  Established by executive order of the Governor of the State of Michigan and then appointed by the Civil Service Commission.

The petition literally uproots one of the most respected, non-partisan offices anywhere in state government, develops in it a new bureaucracy and gives the broader bureaucracy itself the keys to the new tricked-out electioneering car.

Bigger, more partisan government, thy name is RMGN.

Life Beat: Podcasting on Effective Pro-Life Dialogue

Local Area Watch: Future Idiocy

Michigan Taxes Too Much: In Light of Recent Casino Considerations

Random Rants of an Airline Employee: Michigan's Seatbelt Law: A Way to Eliminate

When a news cycle starts off like that (courtesy of the Oakland Press) you know you're in for a rough read over your morning coffee.  And sure enough, the hits just keep on coming.

These are the same companies that have been the economic anchor for the state of Michigan for the last hundred years and the number one industrial crash test dummy for the Democrats nominee for the highest office in the land since his speech at the Detroit Economic Club last year lambasted them over an open flame.  Nothing says "I love Michigan" like a firm kick to the economic... guts.  

In early 2005 I spent six months inside the belly of the beast, working as a genuine, real-life state employee, a regional press secretary for the House Republican caucus.  Eventually my conscience overtook my pocketbook (they didn't pay particularly well to begin with) and I got the heck out of there but not before I'd become physically ill by the phrase "spin-off jobs."  There wasn't a budget or legislative discussion the entire time I was with the state that someone didn't start chirping about the spin-off jobs created by the auto industry.

The Big 3 are either directly responsible for 95 or 100 percent of the total jobs here in Michigan, depending on who you talk to.  (110 if you talk to lobbyists from the MMA.)  There are suppliers, janitorial services at the plants, coffee shops and diners near production facilities, blah blah blah.  Interestingly enough, the liberal media is always anxious to play up the effect spin off jobs will have on the economy when we're adding them.  They tend to forget all about them when they're going the way most moving vans.  To other states.

The Detroit News breaks that trend this morning by informing their readers that the recent roll backs at General Motors alone are expected to cost us upwards of ten-thousand total jobs this year alone... and that things are only going to get worse.

Read on...

You only run a stealth campaign if you have something big and ugly to hide

They say clean intentions create a clean conscience.  So it's worth asking, why does the RMGN petition process continue to be draped in secrecy ten feet thick?  And I'm not even talking about the drive's mystery money men.

When the liberal extremists launched this attempt to switch out the Michigan constitution with a copy of the MDP party platform they went to great lengths to hide their activities.  First they recruited Harland Nye, an 80 year old chicken farmer from rural Barry County.  His entirely unknown name on the committee's organizing papers alone largely kept the drive out of the public eye for several months.  But eventually folks started asking questions.

Enter Joe Lukasiewicz, an only slightly less obscure Democrat from, once again, rural Barry County.  Nye passed press calls off to Joe so that he could take a turn ignoring them.  Neither man would speak with the media, explain their petition, their process, their motivations, describe what the novel sized document actually does or even say hello for that matter.

But eventually the public scrutiny (led by Right Michigan, by the way... I know, shameless plug... don't hate) got to be too much for even Mr. Lukasiewicz to ignore.  The out-of-state interests paying for this monstrosity brought on former Democrat legislator Diane Byrum to handle the press.  Her response to each of their questions?  An even mix of `no comment' and `wait till August.'

We still know zero, zilch and nada about the petition's authors.  They've given us nothing thus far but misdirection.  Hardly the trappings of a clean conscience.  Which begs the question... if they've got nothing to hide why won't they come out of the shadows?