Michigan Policast

Michigan Policast for Monday, March 4, 2019

Walt and Christine kick off the podcast with a conversation on the #FTDR principles from Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

* Five Road Funding Principles

* Michigan Roads Benefit From Decline In ‘Fix Now Pay Later’

Related: Former State Budget Director Bob Emerson joins Michigan Policast to discuss where Michigan can get the money to #FTDR

Later we get into the effects of climate change in the state of Michigan.  Here are the sources for all the facts and figures:

* Less skiing, thinner ice, canceled fests. Michigan adapts to climate change

* Mild fall, lack of snow hitting northern Michigan hard

* Global warming brings sweeping change to U.S., Michigan

* More Rain, Less Snow for U.S. Winters

* Why Detroit and Michigan must worry about global warming

* What is climate change doing to us here in Michigan?

* Climate change brings risks, opportunity to ‘Pure Michigan’

* Facts About Michigan Agriculture

* Are cows the cause of global warming?

I also fly ✈️ & use A/C

Living in the world as it is isn’t an argument against working towards a better future.

The Green New Deal is about putting a LOT of people to work in developing new technologies, building new infrastructure, and getting us to 100% renewable energy. https://t.co/DZGE1WwLbn

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 3, 2019

Related: Andy Sarpolis joins Michigan Policast to discuss the Green New Deal.

 

Rena Basch with Voters Not Politicians joins us to discuss what’s next for the group that took on, and took down, gerrymandering in Michigan.

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Michigan Policast for Monday, February 25, 2019

Governor Whitmer signs a new executive order to move forward on clean water, the Senate and SCOTUS are stupidly skewed toward the conservative minority in this country, and Eric Freedman discusses the future of reporting on Michigan policy and government.

* Christine and Walt start with the new EO that remakes the DEQ into EGLE.  Will the GOP kill this one too, or can we please get to work now?

* There are some big themes in the Democratic Presidential primary.  How will the winner get anything done?  We discuss the Senate imbalance, the filibuster, and expanding the SCOTUS.

* The @MIGOP convention sounds like a giant obstruction-fest.

“What do Democrats stand for? Nothing,” @GOPChairwoman says before listing the Green New Deal, free college, Medicare for all, abolish ICE, and “infanticide” as things they support.

— Andrew Roth (@RothTheReporter) February 23, 2019

 

Eric Freedman

Our guest is Michigan State University journalism professor Eric Freedman. As a reporter at the Detroit News, Freedman won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting which uncovered a huge embezzlement scandal at the state House of Representatives Fiscal Agency.

Governor Whitmer executive order

* Executive Order 2019-6 (pdf) and the accompanying press release is here

* Executive Order 2019-6 non-pdf version with links to related documents

* Whitmer revamps environmental order after GOP rejection

* GOP signals support for Whitmer’s new environmental order

* Governor Whitmer’s request for a legal review of the ‘Polluter Panels’ that currently oversee the DEQ rules and permit process (pdf) and the accompanying press release is here

Senate, filibuster, and SCOTUS

* Pod Save America – section on the future of SCOTUS (podcast)

* The Top 15 Democratic presidential candidates, ranked 

* Why Democrats need to be ready to kill the filibuster

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Michigan Policast for Monday, February 18, 2019

Governor Whitmer’s first State of the State focused on bipartisanship and opportunity, but it was met with a lukewarm response by the Republicans.

* The Republicans don’t have to like everything, but why no love for the women?

* Governor established her credibility with this State of the State.  Can reasonable people agree that she knows the lawmakers’ jobs better than many of the lawmakers do?

* No more half-baked solutions, we just can’t afford it.

* Would Mike Shirkey have looked better in a different color suit?  We think he should smile more.

 

In my speech I was encouraging people to see the humanity in one another in this cruel political environment. In an era when so many women are stepping up to lead, I’m hoping people will focus on our ideas and accomplishments instead of our appearance.

— Governor Gretchen Whitmer (@gretchenwhitmer) February 14, 2019

 

Christine cusses at 13:38.  It’s this word that starts with a B.  We promise that it has educational value in this context.

While we questioned why the women didn’t get a more enthusiastic response from the Republicans, we do give credit and thanks where it’s due.  House Speaker Lee Chatfield showed his support for Governor Whitmer after Fox 2 News published the story on her appearance:

 

I just saw @FOX2News story about Gov. @gretchenwhitmer’s apparel for #SOTS address. The story is ridiculous & never should have given these losers a platform to make these inappropriate statements. Her speech was what mattered! I support her 100% on this! #MyGovernor #GetALife

— Lee Chatfield (@LeeChatfield) February 14, 2019

 

 

What’s up with the Green New Deal?  Andy Sarpolis of the Michigan Sierra Club joins us to help sort things out.

Resources for this week:

State of the State:

* Governor Whitmer’s Full State of the State Address on YouTube

* Welcoming new lawmakers and recognizing the women in government – 4.12

* Calling for people to share their stories – 13.10

* No more half-baked solutions, we have to do the full job – 27.11

* Banning discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity and expanding Elliot Larsen – 30.48

* Equal pay for women – 32.15

Michigan Policast for Monday, February 11, 2019

Republicans push back on Governor Whitmer’s environmental protection initiatives, the clock is ticking on the 2020 ballot initiatives, and Bob Emerson talks about how to fund our road repairs.

* Walt and Christine kick off the show with some background on Governor Whitmer’s environmental protection initiative and why the Republicans are trying to kill it.

* Walt was one of the early participants in the Voters Not Politicians ballot initiative to eliminate gerrymandering in Michigan.  He runs through the 2020 ballot initiatives and the challenges facing these grassroots efforts.

Fix the Damn Roads report: a bipartisan group of government elders comes up with a plan to pay for Michigan’s road repairs.  The group consists of former House Speaker Raul Hillegonds (R), former Senate Republican Leader Ken Sikkema, former Democratic Lt Governor John Cherry, and former House Democratic Leader Bob Emerson, who also served as State Budget Director.  Walt talks to Emerson about the group’s efforts and recommendations.

Our hearts are heavy for John Dingell.

Resources for this week:

* Whitmer’s flurry of executive directives, explained

* Gov. Whitmer Signs Executive Order Announcing Dept. Of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy

* Michigan Senate debates reversing Gov. Whitmer’s environmental overhaul

* When it comes to the Michigan DEQ, does public comment even matter? (an example of why the public is hungry for change on how we handle decisions regarding our natural resources)

* Groups behind Michigan ballot initiatives mull challenges to lame-duck laws

* Michigan 2020 ballot measures

* Voters Not Politicians

* Ex-lawmakers: Hike gas tax 47 cents to fix Michigan roads

* Chris Savage’s great tribute and memories of John Dingell

* The wonderful John Dingell twitter archives

* John Dingell: My last words for America

 

Michigan Policast for Monday, February 4 2019

Former MDP chair Brandon Dillon says the lessons learned in 2016 and 2018 will shape the party’s gameplay for 2020, and also says Gretchen Whitmer may have to go around the Legislature to “fix the damn roads”

And a whole lot more …

* Walt and Christine talk about Governor Whitmer’s first big test:  the dangerous polar vortex that brought freezing temps to the state.  What did it mean, how did she do, and how did it compare to Governor Snyder’s leadership during times of emergency?

* A lot of folks thought we were going to see a settlement in the federal lawsuit over Michigan’s gerrymandered districts, but instead, we’re going to court.

* Lavora Barnes takes over as the Chair of the MDP.

Fix the Damn Roads report: Just how bad are Michigan roads, and why?

Resources for this week:

* Executive Order 2019-01 – Declaration of State of Emergency

* Gov. Whitmer holds cabinet meeting to inform public of actions the state took to protect its citizens

* MSP/EMHSD Publication 101 – Michigan Emergency Management Plan (MEMP)

* Michigan Democrats elect Barnes leader of state party – Detroit Free Press

* Lavora Barnes on Twitter

* Follow Brandon Dillon on Twitter

* State of Michigan roads go from poor to terrible – Detroit Free Press

* Get it Done: Rebuild Michigan – GRETCHEN WHITMER’S PLAN FOR SAFE ROADS, CLEAN WATER, AND A BETTER ECONOMY (pdf)

* Michigan’s roads earn D- grade in new report on state infrastructure

 

This show covers big money, income equality, and the bliss of ignorance.

I start with data from a report called Income Inequality by State, and it ain’t pretty.  Some startling facts about Michigan:

* We’re the 15th most unequal state when it comes to income

* The top 1 percent in Michigan took home 25 times more than the bottom 99 percent in 2012

* 1% took 82% of income growth in MIchigan since 2009 (recovery from great recession)

* In four states (Nevada, Wyoming, Michigan, and Alaska), only the top 1 percent experienced rising incomes between 1979 and 2007, and the average income of the bottom 99 percent fell.

Links:

* Lopsided income growth hurts Michigan

* Michigan union membership dropped significantly in 2014, first full year under right-to-work law

* Economic Fairness:  Is it the government’s job to close the income gap?

Amy and her research!!  She’s got some interesting information on the fight over Rmoney’s Romney’s war chest.   Check out her blog post here.  These are some of the stats that she covers:

 

Walt takes us through “the ignorance caucus” … the folks who deliberately embrace ignorance over science.  They deny climate change, they refuse to vaccinate, and overall, they just dumb-down the country.  Sarah Palin is their spokesperson.  She appeals to the stupid.

* The High Cost of Dissing Science (Walt’s blog)

* Vaccination debate flares in GOP presidential race, alarming medical experts

* 30 percent of Americans agree with Chris Christie on vaccines; 13 percent of scientists do.

We also spend some time on the “solution” for Michigan roads.  Links:

* Poll finds slight edge for Michigan sales tax hike

* Howes: Road fiasco brewing for Snyder, GOP

That’s it for this week.  Remember to comment, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or send us an email.  We love hearing from you!

In this episode we talk about the scary Contract for Liberty, brought to us by Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat.  Let’s be clear, it’s liberty as Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat interpret it, according to their understanding of the bible.  There are 10 points to the Contract for Todd Courser’s worldview, which are

* Freedom to be born

* Freedom to defend ourselves

* Health care freedom

* Freedom from regulatory tyranny (lol)

* Freedom to own property

* Freedom from economic intrusion

* Freedom from unjust taxation

* Restoration to the right to privacy from government intrusion

* Free and independent state

* Bonus concept #11 – Freedom to own rainbow unicorns and sea monkey ninjas

Eclectablog also published a good take-down of this piece of garbage here.

Amy takes us through some SCOTUS shenanigans.  A new case coming up through SCOTUS is as potentially big as Citizens United, and we aren’t hearing a lot about it.  This one is a first amendment challenge to the campaign finance regulations on judicial candidates. From Amy’s blog on the case:

The case stems from the failed candidacy of Lanell Williams-Yulee who, after losing her bid for a county judge seat, was publicly reprimanded and ordered to pay a fine for violating Canon 7c(1) of the Florida Judicial Code of Conduct which stipulates that a candidate “for a judicial office that is filled by public election between competing candidates shall not personally solicit campaign funds.” In the course of the campaign, Williams-Yulee had signed a letter sent to voters in which she personally solicited campaign contributions. Citing First Amendment protections, she challenged the bar association’s finding, yet the Florida Supreme Court ruled against her.

Lovely.  What will this first amendment challenge mean for judicial races going forward?  Eek.

Walt takes us through some points on news and commentary and confirmation bias.  The public can no longer distinguish between news and opinion.  Is the left as bad as the right?  Are our leaders complicit in this?  Has the media let us down?  I ramble, Amy gets all intellectual and fact-ish, and Walt wraps it up with the wisdom of a man who has had a long career in Lansing.

That’s it for this week.  Remember to comment, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or send us an email.  We love hearing from you!

Our first episode for 2015!  Today we talk about the Hastert Rule, corporate welfare queens, and student athlete unions.

We kick off with Kevin Cotter, the new Michigan Speaker of the House.  He’s considering bringing the Hastert Rule to Lansing, ensuring that the minority can never get a vote on a bill unless the majority of the majority caucus agrees with it.  What does that mean by the numbers?  78 out of 110 State Reps can want to vote on something, but unless 32 of them are Republicans, Cotter won’t let it come to the floor.

This disenfranchises the majority of Michiganders, since over 50% of Michiganders voted for Democratic representation.  #gerrymandering #puremichigan #hashtagsoutsideoftwitter

Amy has some good research on corporate welfare queens and how much $$ has been sucked out of the public coffers and into private profits. She compares this with the numbers from the Senate Fiscal Agency on how much money the state will save on drug testing public welfare recipients. (Hint: no money. No money saved.)

Amy runs through some interesting numbers on this, for example, the average American pays $36/yr for food assistance to the poor and $6,000/yr for increased profits to the rich. Sigh.

Walt covers Michigan’s latest step in union bashing, which is the prohibition of student athlete unions.  One of the things that Walt does in this piece is run through all of the requirements of student athletes and compares that to requirements of employees.  It’s pretty clear that these athletes are acting as employees.  The athletes are working hard to enrich the sports programs, and meanwhile they aren’t getting paid, they don’t own their own images or autographs, and many of them have barely enough money to survive.

Links

* Ken Braun: The Hastert Rule would have ruled out much of Reagan’s success

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule

* Michigan’s Corporate Welfare Queens Should Pee in a Cup

* The true welfare queen exposed!

* Why Jim Harbaugh is worth $40 million to the University of Michigan’s football team

* Michigan Curmudgeon

That’s it for this week.  Remember to comment, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or send us an email.  We love hearing from you!

Go Blue!

Go State!

 

In our last podcast of 2014 we talk more about lame duck, transportation, loggers, and why we are going to miss Randy Richardville — who turned-out to be one of the few adults in the room.

What died in lame duck?

* Medical Marijuana reform

* Election rigging

* Sentencing reform

* A new and broadly supported teacher evaluation system

A huge win for commercial logging cruised through lame duck.  Amy explains what this is and why it is so potentially harmful to Michigan’s natural resources.  This is some creepy language in a sick bill from a state rep whose family money comes from logging.  Here’s a brief explanation from Amy’s post on the legislation:

The law will amend NERPA to prohibit the state from engaging in activities that preserve biodiversity, and will instead require the Department of Natural Resources to focus on economic growth in its environmental management practices. They will not be allowed to fund or participate in activities that promote restoration or identify unique habitats. The law actually revises the definition of “conservation” to exclude the promotion of native species and habitats. As if that’s not enough, the law deletes language that attributes loss of biodiversity to human activity — meaning, they could not even converse in the language of the science behind biodiversity.

This law will additionally prevent the DNR from continuing their efforts to stem the spread of invasive species, unless it is determined to be in the best interest of the state’s economic growth.

 

The transportation can gets kicked down the road, and this is just irresponsible on the part of the legislature.  Here’s the ballot language that goes before the public in May 2015:

A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO ELIMINATE SALES AND USE TAXES ON GASOLINE AND DIESEL FUEL, ALLOW AN INCREASE IN THE SALES TAX RATE, DEDICATE REVENUE FOR SCHOOL AID, AND REVISE ELIGIBLE SCHOOL AID USES.

The proposed constitutional amendment would:

• Eliminate all sales or use taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel used in motor vehicles operated on public roads or highways beginning on October 1, 2015;

• Allow an increase in the sales tax rate from 6 percent to 7 percent;

• Activate other laws dedicating additional revenue for transportation purposes, including repair of roads, streets, and bridges;

• Require state funds for school aid to be used exclusively for financial assistance for public school districts, community colleges, and career and technical education and related scholarships; and

• Dedicate a portion of use tax revenue for school aid purposes.

Should this proposal be adopted?

YES [ ]

NO [ ]

If and only if that language is approved, the legislature will enact legislation to do the following:

• Convert existing 19-cent per gallon gasoline and 15-cent per gallon diesel taxes to a wholesale version. Gas taxes could top 41 cents by October 2015, but there would be no additional sales tax, and all resulting revenue would go to transportation.

• Eliminate some annual vehicle registration fee discounts, increase fees for heavy trucks and create new surcharges for electric and hybrid vehicles whose owners pay fewer fuel taxes.

• Strengthen warranty requirements for construction projects and require more competitive bidding...

This time we’re all about Christian persecution, charter schools, and Father Knows Best. Ew.

Religion Freedom Restoration Act. Passed out of the State House faster than you can say “Daddy DeVos.”  We break down the bill as it’s written, strip away the hyperbole, and find that it’s just as scary as you’ve been told. If the government can’t prove that it has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination, then this is indeed a license to discriminate. Not sure how the Michigan government can prove that it has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination against the LGBT community, since the Michigan government has never included the LGBT community in the Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act, even though they could have done so at the same time they were moving MiRFRA out the door.  We’ll be seeing a lot of this play out in courts. I suggest that this law has three purposes:

1. Paying off Daddy DeVos.

2. Elected Democrats, support our agenda or we’ll punish you with “awesome duck” crap like this.

3. Tie up liberal money in court, keep us playing defense.

Here are some links:

* House-approved Michigan Religious Freedom Restoration Act: A license to discriminate?

* Religious freedom bill passes out of Michigan House

* MI RFRA on the Michigan Legislative website

* Get the facts: Understanding Michigan RFRA: The Michigan House GOP website that assures you that MiRFRA is ok, even though it doesn’t tell you what it says, what it will do, or where you can find more information on it.

Oh and Amy persecutes Christians by mentioning that she is an atheist.

Walt weighs in on RFRA v Sharia law.

Amy’s segment focuses on HB5112 and charter schools. 5112 was put forth in October of 2013, written by DeVos’ GLEP and sponsored by Lisa Posthumus Lyons. Amy runs through five problems with this.

Mandates more testing, and will encourage more teaching to the test

Lake Wobegon syndrome that you see in NCLB:  annual learning gains

Guaranteed failure: bottom 5% always get penalized

Blind to poverty: 95% of students have to be suffering in poverty for schools to get any poverty related exceptions

Elitist:  Top performing schools can opt-out

Here’s Stephen Henderson’s editorial on this subject.

Amy also tells the story of K12 Inc., founded by junk-bonds hero Michael Milkin. This is an amazing story of education for-profit startups, venture capital, short sales, and wall street predators. You can see her work on this here. If you want all the details on this story, definitely check that out.

Walt runs through the Community Benefits Bill, Emergency Manager law, and several other examples of the GOP government telling the citizens of Michigan that they know what’s best. Whenever the public steps up and demands something, the Republicans find a way to squash it, circumvent it, or ignore it. They show a complete disdain for the public and the local government, and an excellent example of leadership on this disdain is Rick Snyder.