Posts Tagged Michigan
Cagle Post – Political Cartoons & Commentary – » Right to Work is Part of Economic Liberty
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Opinion, Perspective, Politics on December 20, 2012
Right to Work is Part of Economic Liberty
Many observers were surprised when Michigan, historically a stronghold of union power, became the nation’s 24th “Right to Work” state. The backlash from November’s unsuccessful attempt to pass a referendum forbidding the state from adopting a right to work law was a major factor in Michigan’s rejection of compulsory unionism. The need for drastic action to improve Michigan’s economy, which is suffering from years of big government policies, also influenced many Michigan legislators to support right to work.
Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com
Let us be clear: right to work laws simply prohibit coercion. They prevent states from forcing employers to operate as closed union shops, and thus they prevent unions from forcing individuals to join. In many cases right to work laws are the only remedy to federal laws which empower union bosses to impose union dues as a condition of employment.
Right to work laws do not prevent unions from bargaining collectively with employers, and they do not prevent individuals from forming or joining unions if they believe it will benefit them. Despite all the hype, right to work laws merely enforce the fundamental right to control one’s own labor.
States with right to work laws enjoy greater economic growth and a higher standard of living than states without such laws. According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, from 2001-2011 employment in right to work states grew by 2.4%, while employment in union states fell by 3.4%! During the same period wages rose by 12.5% in right to work states, while rising by a mere 3.1% in union states. Clearly, “Right to Work” is good for business and labor.
Workers are best served when union leaders have to earn their membership and dues by demonstrating the benefits they provide. Instead, unions use government influence and political patronage. The result is bad laws that force workers to subsidize unions and well-paid union bosses.
Of course government should not regulate internal union affairs, or interfere in labor disputes for the benefit of employers. Government should never forbid private-sector workers from striking. Employees should be free to join unions or not, and employers should be able to bargain with unions or not. Labor, like all goods and services, is best allocated by market forces rather than the heavy, restrictive hand of government. Voluntarism works.
Federal laws forcing employees to pay union dues as a condition of getting or keeping a job are blatantly unconstitutional. Furthermore, Congress does not have the moral authority to grant a private third party the right to interfere in private employment arrangements. No wonder polls report that 80 percent of the American people believe compulsory union laws need to be changed.
Unions’ dirty little secret is that real wages cannot rise unless productivity rises. American workers cannot improve their standard of living simply by bullying employers with union tactics. Instead, employers, employees, and unions must recognize that only market mechanisms can signal employment needs and wage levels in any industry. Profits or losses from capital investment are not illusions that can be overcome by laws or regulations; they are real-world signals that directly affect wages and employment opportunities. Union advocates can choose to ignore reality, but they cannot overcome the basic laws of economics.
As always, the principle of liberty will provide the most prosperous society possible. Right to work laws are a positive step toward economic liberty.
Cagle Post – Political Cartoons & Commentary – » Right to Work is Part of Economic Liberty.
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- Right to Work is Part of Economic Liberty (tenthamendmentcenter.com)
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E.J. Dionne: Will Republicans respond thoughtfully or vindictively? – The Washington Post
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP on December 14, 2012
Opinion Writer
Which path for the right?
By E.J. Dionne Jr.,
In the weeks since the election, my hopes have been buttressed by conservatives willing to say that, since Republican candidates have lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections, new thinking might be in order. Democrats went through the same dismal cycle between 1968 and 1988, producing a reformation on the center-left. Conservatives are surely capable of the same.
Oh, yes, and conservatives realize they can’t win elections if they keep turning off Latinos, African Americans, Asians and the young, particularly younger women. As one conservative friend said recently, “It’s not exactly a great approach to go to a Latino voter and say, ‘Well, we’d really rather you weren’t here, but we’d still like you to vote for us.’ ” The potential of a renaissance in conservative thought is enormous, if the right can overcome a certain intellectual laziness and inflexibility that, in fairness, have at other times afflicted the progressive side of politics.
There is, unfortunately, another school of thought on the right that rejects adjusting to a new electorate and to circumstances very different from the ones that Ronald Reagan inherited in 1980. Strategies for future victories are based on a naked use of government power to alter the political playing field in a way that diminishes the political influence of groups likely to be hostile to the conservative agenda.
The tea party movement cast itself as an authentic grass-roots expression of democracy, and in some ways it was. But the conservative legislatures it swept into office in so many states in 2010 took decidedly anti-democratic actions aimed at reducing the size of the electorate through a variety of voter-suppression measures — hard-to-obtain voter IDs, shorter early-voting periods, new barriers to voter registration drives and long ballots that slowed the lines on Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the meantime, changed the rules about financing campaigns in theCitizens United decision, enhancing the sway of wealthy people and moneyed interests.
Now comes Michigan’s new right-to-work law, passed Tuesday in a travesty of normal democratic deliberation. This effort to weaken unions would be problematic in any event. The moral case for unions is that they give bargaining strength to workers who would have far less capacity to improve their wages and benefits negotiating as individuals. Further gutting unions is the last thing we need to do at a time when the income gap is growing.
But beyond that, the way Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and the Republican Michigan Legislature rushed right-to-work through a lame-duck session was insidious. The anti-union crowd waited until after the election to pass it. Snyder had avoided taking a stand on right-to-work until just last week, when he miraculously discovered that it would be a first-rate economic development measure. The law was included as part of an appropriations bill to make it much harder for voters to challenge it in a referendum.
The political motivation here is obvious. Union families are the premier cross-racial Democratic constituency. Nationwide, President Obama carried union households by 18 points but non-union households by only one point — a “union gap” of 17 points. In Michigan, the union gap was an astonishing 32 points: Obama won union households 66 percent to 33 percent, the rest of the electorate by 50 percent to 49 percent.
But the most disturbing aspect of the Michigan power grab is what it says about where the conservative argument may go. Those willing to expand the appeal of conservatism by refreshing it will face opposition from those who would try to make new thinking unnecessary. They’d simply rig the rules to chip away at the political capacity of groups that don’t buy into conservative orthodoxy.
A movement dedicated to markets should have more confidence in democracy’s free market of ideas and stop trying to distort it.
E.J. Dionne: Will Republicans respond thoughtfully or vindictively? – The Washington Post.
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Sen. Levin, Small Businesses Push for Corporate Tax Hikes
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Business, Government, Taxes on December 14, 2012
Sen. Levin, Small Businesses Push for Corporate Tax Hikes
By Niraj Chokshi // December 14, 2012 | 1:05 p.m.
Updated: December 14, 2012 | 2:27 p.m.
AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
It’s time to raise corporate taxes, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and small business owners said on Friday.
Tax-evasion tactics have led to an increasingly smaller effective tax rate for big corporations, putting smaller businesses at a competitive disadvantage, Levin and two small business owners said on a conference call with reporters. But the current fiscal negotiations offer a chance to right that wrong.
“It is very unfair to the American taxpayer, it robs the U.S. Treasury of needed revenues, it’s unfair to any competitors who don’t use these offshore gimmicks and these corporate loopholes,” Levin said. It’s time, he said, to return corporate taxes to historical levels.
Levin was resistant to putting an explicit target on how much revenue should be raised by ending what he called “tax tricks,” but he did offer a range for the next decade.
“I would think if you can get two to three hundred billion in additional corporate tax revenue over that ten-year period that that would be a significant contribution to deficit-reduction,” he said.
Some executives have pushed for “revenue-neutral” reform, which would simplify the corporate tax code, but leave the amount corporations pay roughly the same.
Despite what he called “a huge effort” by big corporations to reduce their tax burden, he said he was convinced a revenue-neutral proposal would make it past neither the Senate nor President Obama.
Earlier this week, the Business Roudntable, a group which counts as members the heads of many of the nation’s largest companies, called for all options to be put on the table in talks to avert the $500 billion in year-end tax hikes and spending cuts that comprise the fiscal cliff.
Tax-evasion tactics have led to an increasingly smaller effective tax rate for big corporations, putting smaller businesses at a competitive disadvantage, Levin and two small business owners said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. But the current fiscal negotiations offer a chance to right that wrong.
“It is very unfair to the American taxpayer, it robs the U.S. Treasury of needed revenues, it’s unfair to any competitors who don’t use these offshore gimmicks and these corporate loopholes,” Levin said. It’s time, he said, to return corporate taxes to historical levels.
Levin was reluctant to put an explicit target on how much revenue should be raised by ending what he called “tax tricks,” but he did offer a range for the next decade.
“I would think if you can get two to three hundred billion in additional corporate tax revenue over that ten-year period that that would be a significant contribution to deficit-reduction,” he said.
Some executives have pushed for “revenue-neutral” reform, which would simplify the corporate tax code, but leave the amount corporations pay roughly the same.
Despite what he called “a huge effort” by big corporations to reduce their tax burden, he said he was convinced a revenue-neutral proposal would make it past neither the Senate nor PresidentObama.
Earlier this week, the Business Roundtable, a group which counts as members the heads of many of the nation’s largest companies, called for all options to be put on the table in talks to avert the $500 billion in year-end tax hikes and spending cuts that comprise the fiscal cliff.
Friday’s call was hosted by the American Sustainable Business Council, Business for Shared Prosperity and the Main Street Alliance, which are collecting signatures for a letter to Congress and President Obama to reform the tax system in a way “that is fair and provides sufficient revenue for the public services and infrastructure that underpin our economy.”
Sen. Levin, Small Businesses Push for Corporate Tax Hikes.
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How Michigan Republicans Caught Labor Off-Guard, Making Law Worse than Wisconsin’s | Alternet
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP on December 14, 2012
How Michigan Republicans Caught Labor Off-Guard, Making Law Worse than Wisconsin’s
A law that seemed to happen overnight was actually years in the making, but Gov. Snyder’s election-year fear of a Koch-funded group may have tipped the balance.
December 12, 2012
Photo Credit: Michigan AFT
It seemed to happen so fast. Actually, it was years in the making: A law designed to eviscerate the membership rolls of labor unions in the state in which the mighty United Auto Workers makes its home was rammed through both houses of the Michigan legislature and signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Rick Snyder. As Wisconsin is to public employee unions, so is Michigan to the unions of the manufacturing sector — a place emblematic of labor’s political sway, a force now diminished by the new law.
Taken up in a lame-duck legislative session, the prospects for the bill’s passage caught everybody off-guard, thanks to a sudden change of heart by Snyder who had, throughout his term, expressed opposition to any law that, like the one he just signed, would allow workers in union shops — such as those employed by the big-three automakers whose plants account for more than 136,000 Michigan jobs — to opt out of paying dues to the unions that represent them.
But Snyder faces re-election in 2014, which means his campaign begins now, with this opening volley. Had the legislature passed the law, drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (the organization funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch that drafted Wisconsin’s anti-union law), and Snyder failed to sign it, he might have faced fierce opposition from Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded astroturf group that was also instrumental in the passage of the Wisconsin law. Even worse (for him), Snyder might have faced a primary challenge.
The Michigan governor was no doubt emboldened in his back-tracking by the results of the Proposal 2 referendum, which, had it passed, would have enshrined collective bargaining rights in the state constitution. The measure’s defeat — by a 15-point margin in an election dominated by Democratic wins from the presidency on down — gave Republicans a “head count,” writes Rich Yeselson at theAmerican Prospect. “The head count said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters.” (In fairness to the unions, it should be said that opponents waged a relentless air campaign against the proposal in the final two weeks of the election, according to Karla Swift of the Michigan AFL-CIO, drawing from a virtually bottomless well of money provided by the likes of the Kochs, the DeVos family that created the Amway empire, and assorted business interests.)
So, head count no doubt taken into consideration, Snyder gambled that his embrace of the law its proponents call “right to work” would cost him less at the polls than it would to piss off the Kochs and their friends. Until that point, however, Snyder — who is an anti-choice right-winger — had his apologists among Michigan’s smart set, notably the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press, the state’s best-known newspaper. And the editorial board was not amused. To be proven so wrong in its backing of a public official whose shortcomings they so often lent cover — well, smart-set people such as editorial board members don’t like being left with egg on their faces. And so they wrote:
In short, we trusted Snyder’s judgment.
That trust has now been betrayed — for us, and for the hundreds of thousands of independents who voted for Snyder with the conviction that they were electing someone more independent, and more visionary, than partisan apparatchiks like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker or Florida’s Rick Scott.
(Here’s hoping editorial board members will remember this moment the next time they’re inclined to side with a self-described moderate who is actually a right-winger.)
But unions are not totally without blame in this equation. As Ruth Conniff of theProgressive, a publication known as a stalwart supporter of labor, points out, unions, especially the UAW, made perhaps too many concessions along the way, weakening their power and the public perception thereof. And, as Harold Meyerson notes in his comprehensive TAP piece (“What Happens if Labor Dies?”), by the 1980s unions were hardly working to broaden their membership. “Lulled during the years of labor’s power into thinking they’d attained sufficient numbers to keep on winning better contracts, they largely stopped organizing,” Meyerson writes, “devoting only 4 percent of their budgets to recruiting new members.”
The next step for Michigan labor leaders and their allies is to get a referendum on the ballot that would essentially repeal the just-passed union-busting law. It will be a hard fight, and could take several years to win, Yeselson writes, but it’s winnable.
But that’s just Michigan. What’s needed is a national, progressive strategy that encompasses labor battles — after all, this is the essence of the class war fight — with all the other progressive issues. (Just a day after passing the anti-labor law, Michigan’s legislature introduced a bill that would allow healthcare providers to opt out of providing care that goes against their religious beliefs.) Most of these battles take place at the state level. Progressives need an ALEC of their own — and a lot of boots on the ground.
How Michigan Republicans Caught Labor Off-Guard, Making Law Worse than Wisconsin’s | Alternet.
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Cagle Post – Political Cartoons & Commentary – » Right-To Work In Michigan : 24 Down, 26 To Go
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Opinion, Perspective on December 13, 2012
Right-To Work In Michigan : 24 Down, 26 To Go
Back in the late 1970s, when the now-legendary Lee Iacocca took the reins at Chrysler, he was reputed to have told the union bosses, “Look, boys, I’ve got a shotgun to your head. I’ve got thousands of jobs at seventeen bucks an hour. I’ve got no jobs at twenty.”
And that’s when most Americans would have loved to be making $17 an hour.
David Fitzsimmons / Arizona Daily Star
Iacocca, of course, had put his money where his mouth was, taking over the ailing corporation for a salary of $1 per year and slashing management pay, while borrowing what today seems like a paltry sum of a couple of billion dollars. By 1983, the company had paid it all back, returning a tidy profit of $350 million to the taxpayer coffers.
Fast forward to 2012. Barack Obama has bailed out Chrysler and General Motors — or, more accurately, bailed out the United Auto Workers (UAW) by handing them ownership of the bonds held by the rightful investors — to the tune of somewhere between $80 billion and $100 billion. Both companies are still struggling, although to hear Obama tell the tale, they are a great American success story, thanks to his largess with our money.
Obama, who has not stopped campaigning since first declaring his candidacy five years ago (in all fairness, it is all the man knows how to do), just happened to be on the road again — in Detroit, of all places — on the very day the legislature was passing and Gov. Rick Snyder was signing historic legislation to make Michigan a right-to-work state. And a month after Obama himself had won the state handily in his own re-election bid, with massive help from the UAW, no less. Who could ever have imagined?
For Michiganders, this was do-or-die time. Detroit, a once-mighty industrial city of 1.8 million people in its heyday, has been reduced to a shell of its former self, gasping along with a population of 800,000, many of them poor and unemployed. Entire sections of the city resemble the worst of parts of the Bronx or bombed-out Beirut in the 1970s. Motor City, as it was once known, is now a ghetto where boarded-up homes can be purchased for $1,000 as entire neighborhoods sit abandoned.
As the city disintegrated before their eyes, it is as though the liberals who ran the place for the last 50 years could not see what was happening. Good jobs, building American cars, went elsewhere. Ford started building some of its products in Mexico. GM increasingly utilized Canadian labor across the northern border. And Lee Iacocca’s beloved Chrysler got passed around from one foreign owner to another (currently the Italian company Fiat).
Meanwhile, German, Japanese and Korean automakers began setting up shop in business-friendly states, paying good wages, with good benefits, for building good cars in places like Indiana, Tennessee and South Carolina, states that do not require a worker to pay dues to a union to get a job. But in Michigan, the UAW continued along as if it were still the 1950s and they were the only people who could build automobiles.
In its post-war glory years, the UAW could dictate contract terms to the management of the “Big Three.” After all, where else could Americans — or anyone else — go to buy a decent car in those days? Europe and Japan were in rubble. Most of Asia, including Korea, was still a backwater. Detroit was Motor City. Not anymore. Despite the nostalgic TV commercials advertising Chrysler (“imported from Detroit”), Motor City has become a social and fiscal basket case, thanks largely to union greed.
It is long past time to break the stranglehold labor unions have had on the public and private sectors. Despite the re-election of Barack Obama, the tide is turning against union thuggery. In Wisconsin, the legislature and the governor curtailed the power of unions last year, with Gov. Scott Walker surviving a recall attempt to emerge more popular than ever. And now Gov. Snyder and the Republican legislature in Michigan have done the unimaginable: they have turned Michigan into a right-to-work state.
24 down, 26 to go.
Cagle Post – Political Cartoons & Commentary – » Right-To Work In Michigan : 24 Down, 26 To Go.
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Cagle Post – Political Cartoons & Commentary – » Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor Compared Anti-Union Law To Tithing At Church
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Opinion, Perspective on December 13, 2012
Michigan’s Lieutenant Governor Compared Anti-Union Law To Tithing At Church
Bold Progressive by Zaid Jilani
Michigan’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley has taken to Twitter to defend his administration’s push for an anti-union “Right To Work” law which would allow workers to be represented by unions without having to pay union dues.
Here’s one weak defense Calley offered for enacting “Right To Work.” He said that he isn’t required to donate to any church he attends, so workers should be able to represented by unions in the workplace without being asked to pay dues:
Calley’s analogy widely misses the mark. Unions represent workers at their workplace and need dues to be able to do that. Almost all people have to work to be able to provide for their families, and representation in the workplace is explicitly part of a democratic society.
Unlike the workplace, religious worship is a fundamentally private and voluntary activity and is not subject to the same government oversight (and for good reason).
If Calley wants to invoke the church, he should listen to one of its most famous men, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Here’s what he had to say about “right to work”:
“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.
Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.”
Thousands of Michiganders are expected to converge on the capitol today to protest against the so-called “Right To Work” bill.
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Mitt Romney’s Expanding Map: Desperation or Realization? – ABC News
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Politics on November 4, 2012
Oct 31, 2012
Mitt Romney’s Expanding Map: Desperation or Realization?
Why are GOP outside groups and the Romney campaign starting to spend money and time moving into blue territory such as Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan?
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com.
Here are some theories:
1. Ohio is a lost cause so Team Romney needs another path to 270: Despite the plethora of media polls showing Obama ahead in the Buckeye state, GOPers not affiliated with the Romney campaign say they have polling showing a dead heat or Romney slightly ahead. In that vein, we are left to wonder whether Romney’s decision to run a blatantly false ad in Toledo – re: Jeep factory moving to China – is a hail Mary or a way to try and tip this very tight contest?
2. Better Bang for the Buck: Campaigns and the outside groups have lots of money to spend and not a lot of places to spend it.
Not only is it prohibitively expensive to try to buy last-minute ad time in places such as Ohio and Virginia, there simply might not be any ad time to buy. TV stations have to make ad time available to campaigns, but not to outside groups. Moreover, the TV stations aren’t required to provide the most-highly desired times (like prime time or morning time) to candidates.
If an outside group wants to get the biggest bang for its buck, states such as Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan is where they’ll get it.
3. Trying to Make Something Out of Demographics: What do Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan have in common?
Vote in 2008:
National = 74 percent white
Pa. = 81 percent white;
Minn. = 90 percent white
Mich. = 82 percent white
Latest ABC News-Washington Post tracker, Romney gets 57 percent of the white vote, including 60 percent of white men
4. Trying to Keep Momentum Storyline Going Even Though Momentum Is Gone:
As our tracking poll has shown, whatever momentum Romney had last week has stalled. So, what better way to keep the “momentum” storyline going than to show a campaign confident enough to expand the map.
Mitt Romney’s Expanding Map: Desperation or Realization? – ABC News.
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Free Wood Post – Police Dig Up Driveway Looking For Hoffa, Find Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on October 4, 2012
Police Dig Up Driveway Looking For Hoffa, Find Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
By Jeff Musall
In a surprising development, police in Michigan looking for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa found something quite different. At first it seemed like all the excitement was for nothing as crews found only rock and dirt under the driveway. The excavator was about to be loaded back on the trailer and taken away when a worker noticed a black box buried in a layer of sand.
At first it was thought they might have found Hoffa. The box was small, but large enough to contain some remains. The excitement built when a cutting torch was fired up. When the latch and hinges were cut off and the torch turned off, the tension built to a high and everyone grew silent. A police officer looked dismayed when he opened the box and said to the gathered crowd “it’s just a bunch of paperwork.”
“Wait a minute,” another officer said, “what do we have here?” He took out what looked like several folders and read the information aloud. “Romney tax returns, and several years worth.”
Suddenly, a man burst through the crowd and ran at the box with some sort of incendiary device. Police were able to stop him, but others came with the same intent. Authorities were dumbfounded as to why so many seemingly normal people were committed to destroying what had been discovered. One investigator speculated that they might be some sort of sleeper agent. Allegedly, they all are members of the Mormon church and sell Amway products.
The Romney campaign was hesitant to respond. As of this report, the only statement is a one-sentence brief put out via Twitter. “Mitt Romney has always paid his taxes,” was all it said. Reporters are clamoring for more information but are hitting a wall of silence so far.
An accountant at the scene took a quick look at the returns and offered some insight, saying “Wow. No wonder he didn’t want anyone to see his tax returns.”
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- Police in Jimmy Hoffa case take soil to experts at Michigan State University (mlive.com)
- Has Jimmy Hoffa Finally Been Found? (history.com)
- Police: No Hoffa Remains Under Roseville Driveway (detroit.cbslocal.com)
- Do You Know Where Jimmy Hoffa Is? (987ampradio.cbslocal.com)
- Is Jimmy Hoffa buried under a Detroit driveway? (thestar.com)
- Hoffa mystery endures; no remains below Roseville home (mlive.com)
- Search For Jimmy Hoffa Leads To Driveway Near Detroit – NPR (blog) (npr.org)
- Newest Search For Jimmy Hoffa Under Michigan Driveway (wspa.com)
Free Wood Post – Police Dig Up Driveway Looking For Hoffa, Find Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on September 27, 2012
Police Dig Up Driveway Looking For Hoffa, Find Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
September 27, 2012
By Jeff Musall
In a surprising development, police in Michigan looking for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa found something quite different. At first it seemed like all the excitement was for nothing as crews found only rock and dirt under the driveway. The excavator was about to be loaded back on the trailer and taken away when a worker noticed a black box buried in a layer of sand.
At first it was thought they might have found Hoffa. The box was small, but large enough to contain some remains. The excitement built when a cutting torch was fired up. When the latch and hinges were cut off and the torch turned off, the tension built to a high and everyone grew silent. A police officer looked dismayed when he opened the box and said to the gathered crowd “it’s just a bunch of paperwork.”
“Wait a minute,” another officer said, “what do we have here?” He took out what looked like several folders and read the information aloud. “Romney tax returns, and several years worth.”
Suddenly, a man burst through the crowd and ran at the box with some sort of incendiary device. Police were able to stop him, but others came with the same intent. Authorities were dumbfounded as to why so many seemingly normal people were committed to destroying what had been discovered. One investigator speculated that they might be some sort of sleeper agent. Allegedly, they all are members of the Mormon church and sell Amway products.
The Romney campaign was hesitant to respond. As of this report, the only statement is a one-sentence brief put out via Twitter. “Mitt Romney has always paid his taxes,” was all it said. Reporters are clamoring for more information but are hitting a wall of silence so far.
An accountant at the scene took a quick look at the returns and offered some insight, saying “Wow. No wonder he didn’t want anyone to see his tax returns.”
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- Is Jimmy Hoffa Buried Under a Driveway in Michigan? (newsfeed.time.com)
- Curious visit possible Jimmy Hoffa burial site (kfwbam.com)
- PHOTOS: Is Jimmy Hoffa buried under this driveway? (kens5.com)
- Police search for Jimmy Hoffa’s body in Michigan driveway (mnn.com)
- Jimmy Hoffa’s daughter says doubts her father’s body will be found in Roseville (clickondetroit.com)
- Police Dig for Hoffa in Detroit (drudge.com)
- Drilling for Hoffa (boingboing.net)
- Curious visit possible Jimmy Hoffa burial site in Roseville (mlive.com)
- Could Jimmy Hoffa be buried under a Detroit driveway? (wtvr.com)
- Police look for Jimmy Hoffa body (bbc.co.uk)
Cagle Post » “President Romney” – How to Prevent Those Two Words From Ever Being Spoken
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in GOP, Mitt Romney, Opinion on September 13, 2012
“President Romney” – How to Prevent Those Two Words From Ever Being Spoken
In two months we Americans will go to the polls once again to decide who the president will be for the next four years. We will not be allowed to vote on those who wield the true power in this country. On November 6th we will not vote for the chairman of ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase or Citibank or the Premier of China. That day will come, but not this year.
Daryl Cagle / NBCNews.com
Now, I know there are a goodly number of you out there who believe there’s not a snowball’s chance in Kenya that Barack Obama will not be re-elected to the White House. And why would you believe otherwise? After the incredible Democratic convention this week, with the best rock-em-sock-em speeches I’ve heard from a Democrat’s mouth since … since, I don’t know when. You can’t help but not have a contact high after this past week if you are of the sort who believes in economic justice, peace, and a five-dollar latte. Right now, with the buzz on, you are sitting there thinking that your fellow Americans will turn out in massive numbers, either because they want to continue the Obama era or because they’re scared shitless of the barbarians at the gate – or both. You’re convinced that the Republicans have blown it with all their talk of the lady parts they want to control even though we now know that they have no idea where those parts are, what they are, or how they work.
Yes, it certainly looks like the voters will reject this obscenely wealthy man called Romney — Romney of Michigan/Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Utah/Zurich/Grand Cayman — this man who will not explain exactly how all his wealth was obtained, where he keeps it, or how much taxes he pays on it. He wants to turn the clock back to the ’50s – the 1850s – and he refuses to offer any specific plan about what he’ll do about anything. He wants to run the country like a corporation but he can’t even control one 82-year-old actor on his own convention stage, a Hollywood legend who, in the matter of ten and a half minutes went from Good (walking onto the stage) to Bad (talking to a chair) and then to Ugly (the chair started … swearing?). It was better than the best cat-flushing-the-toilet video on YouTube and it was a gift to all of us who know that Romney is doomed come November.
Or is he?
Last week, I said on the HuffPost Live webcast that we had all better start practicing how to say “President Romney” because, living in Michigan, I can tell you that there’s trouble here on the two peninsulas and it’s not just because Romney is a native son or that we like to watch kids from Cranbrook chase down gay kids and chop their hair off. One recent poll here showed Romney leading Obama by four points! How can that be? Didn’t Obama save Detroit?
No, he didn’t. He saved General Motors and Chrysler. ”Detroit” (and Flint and Pontiac and Saginaw) are not defined by the global corporations who suck our towns dry and then split town to make more money elsewhere (except, of course, they continued to design and built crap cars, so eventually they didn’t make the money at all). These cities in Michigan are about the people who live here, and in the process of “saving Detroit,” Mr. Obama had to fire thousands of these people, and reduce the benefits and pensions of those who were left. There’s a lot of pissed off people in Michigan (and Wisconsin and Ohio), people who weren’t saved even though the corporation was. I’m just stating a fact, and those of you who don’t live here should know this.
Pat Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune
The other problem facing us this election (spoiler alert – angry white guys may want to stop reading right now) … is race. We all fear there’s probably a good 40% of the country who simply do not want a black man in the Oval Office. In fact, in 2008, Obama lost the white vote. He lost every white age group except young people (18-29). And yet he still won by 10 million votes! The optimistic secret the Obama people know is that only about 70% of the voters in November will be white. So if he can win just 35-40% of them, and then get a massive majority of people of color, he can win re-election. There is no question in my mind that Obama is more popular than Romney and if everyone could vote from their couch like they do for American Idol, Obama would win hands down. As I have said before, we live in a liberal country. The majority of Americans (who do not call themselves “liberal”) now support most of the liberal agenda – they’re for gay marriage, they’re pro-choice, they’re anti-war, they believe there’s global warming, and they hate Wall Street for what it has done to them and their neighbors. The Republicans know this: that we, the majority, will have sex when we want and with whom we want, will read and watch whatever we want when we want, will use marijuana if we want and if we don’t want to then we certainly don’t want our friends who do to be throw into prison.
We are sick and tired of being poisoned, by chemicals or propaganda, we think the Palestinians have been given a raw deal and we want our friggin’ jobs back! The Christian Right (and their Wall Street funders) know this all too well – America has turned, and there’s no going back to not loving someone because of the color of their skin or expecting women to cede control of their bodies to a bunch of Neanderthals. So, what’s a Rightie to do now that we’ve turned the joint into Sodom and G? They have to suppress the vote! They have to stop as many liberals from voting as possible. So they’ve passed many voter suppression laws to make it hard for the poor, the minorities, the disabled and students to vote. They honestly believe they can pull this off – and they just may. The only “positive” thing about this is that their need to have such laws in order to win the election is an admission on the part of the Republicans that they know the U.S. Is a liberal country and that the only way they can now win now is to cheat. Trust me, if they believed that America was a right-wing country they’d be passing laws making it so easy to vote you could do it in the checkout line at Walmart.
But the voting on November 6th will not take place at Walmart or on any potato’s couch. It can only happen by going to a polling place – and, not to state the obvious, the side that gets the most people physically out to the polls that day, wins. We know the Republicans are spending tens of millions of dollars to make sure this very thing happens. They have built a colossal get-out-the-vote machine for election day, and the sheer force of their tsunami of hate stands ready to overwhelm us like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Those of us in the Midwest got a taste of it in 2008. Traditionally Democratic states – all of which voted for Obama – saw our state legislatures and governor seats hijacked by this well-oiled machine. We didn’t know what hit us, but these new Republicans wasted no time in dismantling some of the very basic thing we hold dear. Wisconsin fought back – but even that huge grassroots uprising was not enough to stop the governor bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. It was a wake up call, for sure – but have we really woken up?
For those of us who believe that the history of the Democrats and the Republicans is to do the bidding of the 1% (Obama’s #1 private contributor in ’08 were the people at Goldman Sachs), and that while the Dems are a kinder/gentler bunch, they are also just as quick to want to take us to war and sell us out to the corporate interests (and, yes, Obamacare is a $$ gift to the insurance companies; only a single-payer system will stop that), this election is a bit of a bitter pill. We were hugely disappointed when President Obama didn’t charge out of the gate after his inauguration and undo the damage that had been done (as FDR did in his first hundred days) – and only when Wall Street stopped writing him the big campaign checks this past year did he get his mojo back and start fighting the fight that needs to be fought. He’s a good and decent person (when he’s not sending in drones to kill Pakistani civilians or prosecuting government whistleblowers), and his election four years ago was a high point of such emotional intensity I just couldn’t get over how hopeful I was that this country had changed and we had found our moral footing. Reality set in a few weeks later when he put Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of economic policy and then he changed his mind about closing Gitmo.
OK, so people like me, just once in our lifetime, would like to get our way all the time! Is that too much to ask? Of course, there is a different question that is in the air now — shall we give the country back to the crowd who gave the country to the 1%? I think not. So let’s join in with our liberal majority and be fierce and relentless in these next two months. Let’s spend this time educating people what we mean when we say things like “single-payer” and “Blackwater.” Politics and the fate of the nation (and the world – sorry, world) are on the front burner and those of us who want to wrestle control of our society out of the hands of the few can take healthy advantage of these coming weeks. Don’t sit it out. Don’t try to convince anyone Obama has magically transformed us – just tell them four years is simply not enough time to undo all the hurt caused by biggest economic crash since the Great Depression and the biggest military blunder/lie in our history.
I’m going to go with my optimistic side here (sorry, cynics, you know I love you) and imagine a Second Term Obama (and a Democratically-controlled Congress) who will go after all the good that our people deserve and put the power of our democracy back in our hands. There’s good reason why the Right is terrified of a Second Term Obama because that is exactly what they think he’ll do: the real Obama will appear and take us down the road to social justice and tolerance and a leveling of the economic playing field. For once, I’d like to say I agree with the Right – and I sincerely hope their worst nightmare does come true.
Cagle Post » “President Romney” – How to Prevent Those Two Words From Ever Being Spoken.
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