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Still working on that "cutting to the bone" thing while Lansing talks new taxes (again)By Nick, Section News
It's no secret that Lansing democrats are hoping to raise our taxes again. It was only weeks ago that Speaker of the House Andy Dillon told the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association that a lame-duck vote to spike the gas tax was "probable." The man took a lot of heat for that accidental confession so you know he's enjoyed the thaw these last couple of days, the damage it's caused to the roads and the corresponding action at the State Capitol.
While drivers across the State try and often times fail to dodge some of the biggest pot-holes in recent memory (near record setting snowfall and cold will do that to roads, Al Gore) a group is meeting in Lansing to discuss the future of State funding for roads. There's no time like the present to find a handful of angry motorists who are willing to charge themselves an extra nine cents a gallon if it means charging every other Michigander hundreds of millions of dollars. At least that's the way the thinking goes. After all, there's still an entire political party full of activists, bloggers, political hacks, elected officials and taxpayer funded public employees who didn't mind the last $2.4 billion tax hike, don't mind the thought of a new $8 billion tax hike on natural gas and electricity and wouldn't mind at all if we chalked up another hundred million here or there to protect their pet political projects and government waste. What they constantly hope taxpayers will forget is that money is fungible. It can be spent on anything. Similarly, it can be saved from anywhere. It can be applied, reapplied or, as is often the case under the Capitol dome, misapplied. The Lansing State Journal reports:
The governor this past month launched a task force designed to figure out how to pay for what needs fixing. And this Wednesday, the County Road Association of Michigan will host its annual meeting in Delta Township, drawing an audience of road experts from every county.
The overall theme is money and how much more must be spent if road maintenance is to keep ahead of decay, according to the association. Liberals and conservatives, these days, read that last paragraph in two very distinct ways. The left asks "how much more money" and "how will we raise it?" Conservatives ask, among other questions, "how much more money" and "where can we save it?" They may also ask, "why do Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow continually fail to bring Michigan out of donor status in Washington DC?" The state with, arguably, the most consistently weather-beaten roads in the nation still only receives about ninety-two cents for every road tax dollar we send to the federal government. If there's one state that should be above the dollar threshold it's Michigan. But alas, Senator Levin is apparently too busy readjusting his glasses. But that's neither here nor there. Read on...
The roads are a mess, Democrats want to raise our taxes (again), `probably' plan to hold a vote in November on a gas tax hike, according to Andy Dillon, and Jennifer Granholm is creating task forces and commissions to "study" the problem and release likely-pre-drafted reports telling residents just how bleak the future looks without more "revenues." She's... ahem... paving the way for another tax increase. (Ba-dum-CHING!)
While the tax-hike drum beats start again it is important to remember that it isn't a gas-tax-or-nothing proposition. If the State really does require extra money for road construction and repairs there is an opportunity to find it elsewhere in government through the elimination of wasteful spending. As long as Lansing continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on items like a fancy new Michigan State Police Headquarters that even MSP said they didn't need and didn't want, on full-time staff for an Office of the First Gentleman, on lifetime welfare benefits for able bodied adults... the list can go on and on... they'll have a hard time convincing anyone that Lansing has a "revenue" problem. For the love of pete, they just swiped an extra $1.5 BILLION last year alone and that still isn't enough. Instead of another taxpayer funded blue ribbon panel on ways to gorge working moms and dads how about Lansing simply examine some of our local units of government who, it turns out, are finding interesting ways to save a little cash themselves. The Detroit News reports this morning that places like Inkster have saved $10,000 by eliminating nice but unnecessary programs (and they're not the only ones).
"We made a commitment every season to purchase (the displays), but we haven't been able to do that," Hampton said. "It demonstrates that cities are forced to deal with core responsibilities. Everything else is on the chopping block...
Elected in November, Mayor Jim Fouts nixed a chauffeur who had escorted his predecessor, deploying the driver and shifting the duties to create a mobile mini police station. "It serves as an effective deterrent," Fouts said. "We're making it easier for people to report things to the police and making it more flexible and mobile. It's allowing residents to become familiar with the police."
Savings: $30,000 in overtime cuts. Imagine how much cash a city like Detroit could save by scaling back the mayoral chauffeur service... or refusing to pay for losses in multi-million dollar lawsuits that find the mayor responsible for illegal firings, perjury and who knows what else.
Would it be nice to pay Kwame's legal bills? Sure. Would it be nice to pay for a driver for Jim Fouts? Of course. And everyone loves Santa. It'd be nice if the city could pay for those decorations instead finding others to sponsor the displays. It'd also be nice if we could buy iPods for every school kid and put a pony in every little girls backyard. But alas, this is reality. We just plain can't afford it. Just ask the union guys walking the UAW picket line outside American Axle this morning. The Ivory Tower reports that they've fallen back to blaming Hillary Clinton's favorite trade policy for their woes. And yes, Hill is still Jennifer Granholm's BFF. And yes, that's still one heck of an interesting kind of ironic, what with the Gov's rampant anti-trade tirades in 2006.
"It probably is not accurate that the real competition is Mexico," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor. "The real competition is anybody anywhere in the world. It's a globalized industry today. You have to be competitive with whatever you're building, wherever you're building it."
These talks, American Axle says, are really about competition in the United States. That's the sad truth of it all. The Detroit News reported last week that American Axle's all-in cost of employment was over $73 an hour per employee. That's 300 percent of what AA's domestic (read: U.S.) competitors are paying today. Again we find that Michigan's stiffest competition is in Ohio, not Mexico. Go ahead and raise the gas tax another nine cents a gallon and see what that does to service stations anywhere along Michigan's borders.
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Related Links+ Lansing State Journal+ Detroit News + iPods for every school kid + Ivory Tower + Detroit News [2] + Also by Nick |
