I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop delivered the GOP’s response to Gov. Granholm’s State of the State speech Wednesday night, and where Granholm’s speech made virtually no mention of taxes or state revenues, Bishop left no doubt that the Republican leadership in Congress still adamantly refuses to even consider any measures to stabilize state government revenue.
Though he admits in the speech that revenue for the state’s General Fund was down 43 percent since 2000, he staunchly rejected any attempt to boost those revenues to pay for state services. As he has all year, he argued for dealing with the systemic annual deficits solely through budget cuts. At times, Bishop’s response seemed so reality-averse that it was almost Orwellian in its redefinitions:
But real reform WILL NOT happen as long as government keeps digging into the pocketbooks of job providers and taxpayers to bankroll reckless spending…
Last year, we rejected more than a billion dollars in proposed tax increases. And we also passed reforms that eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary, job-killing government regulation.
Our focus has been on improving the quality of life for Michigan residents. We do this by maintaining public safety, strengthening education, protecting the environment and helping job providers remain more competitive.
Those statements have an inverse relationship to the true nature of the budget cuts imposed in this year’s budget. Those cuts did not involve “reckless spending” or “job-killing government regulation,” nor did they help maintain public safety or strengthen education. Those cuts included hundreds of millions of dollars taken away from K-12 education, forcing schools all over the state to slash their budgets in the middle of the school year. Detroit public schools, already severely underfunded and already underachieving, lost $14 million due to the cuts. Lansing’s schools lost nearly $2.5 million. Grand Rapids lost more than $3 million.
They also included hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cuts to local revenue sharing, the lion’s share of which goes to fund fire and police departments. Virtually every community in the state — Grand Rapids, Lansing, Bay City, Detroit — is now laying off police officers and firefighters as a result of those cuts.
Perhaps that’s what Bishop means by “bold leadership” and “wise investment.”
Here’s the full text of Bishop’s address:
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter