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Bin Laden-loathing, Sharia-hating, flag-waving, horn-honking. . . Muslims? (The Michigan View 05.03.11)
Posted by hpayne on May 3, 2011
On Friday in Dearborn, the fiery Floridian warned from the steps of City Hall that the Metro Detroit Muslim community may be Ground Zero for the rise of Sharia law in the United States. Two days later, those very Dearborn residents were at City Hall — just like their fellow Americans from New York to D.C. — celebrating the death of the 9-11 monster, Osama bin Laden.
The irony of what took place in one of America’s most heavily Muslim areas in one weekend is profound. It is proof (as if any were needed) that American Muslims are in the United States to escape Sharia law — not to import it.
“Drivers honked their horns in celebration along the main avenue of Arab-American commerce in the heavily Middle Eastern suburb of Dearborn as news of Osama bin Laden’s death spread across the city. Yet more gathered outside City Hall, chanting ‘U.S.A.’ and waving American flags,” reported AP. (While we’re noting ironies, it should also be said that Dearborn’s anti-Jones, anti-First Amendment political buffoons thankfully did not demand that the Muslim demonstrators pay a “peace bond” for their anti-Obama demonstrations.)
“It’s a special day for us to show Americans we are celebrating, we are united,” demonstrator Ahmed Albedairy told the AP. Albedairy came to Metro Detroit from Iraq in 1996.
Indeed, bin Laden’s al Qaida has brought nothing but pain and suffering to Iraqis like Albedairy. Like generations of American immigrants, they came to the U.S. to escape the horrors of their homeland. Contrary to Terry Jones and a train of opportunistic pols that extends to those who denounced the building of the “Ground Zero mosque” in New York – American Muslims in Dearborn and New York City should be celebrated.
Jones and mosque opponents like Sarah Palin feed on paranoia about the Muslim religion. But their fears are misplaced. Like Jones, Palin has tried to lump American Muslims like Ground Zero Mosque imam, Feisal Rauf, with Mideast terror groups such as Hamas that have condemned the U.S. raid on bin Laden as “the killing of an Arab holy warrior.”
“Rauf refuses to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization,” Palin says of the imam who would build the Park 51 Project in lower Manhattan. But her charge is no more true than Jones’ claims of Dearborn as fertile soil for Shara law.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization. They have committed terrorist acts,” Rauf told WJR-Radio host Frank Beckmann this year in one of his many denunciations of Islamic extremists who “pose more of a threat, in fact, to Muslim-majority societies.”
Instead of protesting Muslims like Rauf, Jones and Palin should join him in his treks abroad where he seeks to sow the seeds of American democracy. That is where they will find the Sharia law that has so enslaved Muslims that they have fled to the United States. Indeed, one of the great stories since bin Laden took down the World Trade towers in 2001, is that extreme Islam is not only being rejected in the U.S. — but in the Mideast as well.
“What the vast majority of people in the Muslim world want is what we have here,” says Rauf in explaining his “dream” (a deliberate allusion to MLK) of Park 51— like community centers all over the world to showcase religious tolerance. “Look at our Declaration [of Independence]. The American formulation of how to structure a system of rights . . . is the ideal form for Muslim countries to follow. I want Muslim states to become America-like states.”
“This is a holiday,” one Dearborn resident told WWJ-Radio this morning of the 9-11 mastermind’s demise.
Increasingly, the whole world wants a holiday from bin Laden. Muslims in America are proof that America is winning the war on radial international Islam — not just abroad, but right here at home.
Dearborn’s First Amendment barbecue ( The Michigan View 04.26.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 26, 2011
By burning the First Amendment, Dearborn mayor John O’Reilly Jr. and his Wayne County cronies have managed to make nutty pastor Terry Jones a free speech hero, united the left-wing ACLU and right-wing Thomas More Law Center, stereotyped Muslims as intolerant zealots, and put Dearborn on the map as a bastion of small-town ayatollahs.
With friends like Mayor O’Reilly, who needs enemies?
O’Reilly’s outrageous action against the Quran-burning quack — resulting in a Wayne County jury’s conviction of Jones for planning a demonstration in front to the Dearborn Islamic Center on Good Friday — has made Dearborn the laughingstock of First Amendment constitutionalists everywhere.
“We were arrested for something we had not done,” said Jones, who has retained the conservative More Center in a lawsuit against the City of Dearborn.
“This should have never come to this point to begin with,” said Rana Elmir of the ACLU of Michigan. “The judge should have dismissed the case. It’s a complete abuse of the court process, and all those involved should be ashamed.”
“(District Judge Mark Somers) should have thrown this case out of court immediately,” agreed Wayne State Constitutional scholar Robert Sedler. “And (Wayne County prosecutor) Kym Worthy should know the law. People have a right to use the public street to express their views.”
Alas, Judge Somers only threw gasoline on O’Reilly’s fire by ordering Jones to stay away from the mosque for three years. Worthy defended her prosecution, claiming that “these proceedings were solely about public safety.”
Worthy, Somers and O’Reilly were surely concerned about a repeat of the deadly riots in Afghanistan that erupted after Jones barbecued a Quran last month (not to mention their election chances if they defied Dearborn’s mob). But it’s not hard to see where their paranoid policing of free speech leads.
Should Big Labor be denied the right to protest in Lansing for fear their Snyder-as-Hitler posters would lead to violence? Should Sarah Plain be denied a platform to “target Democrats for defeat” for fear of another Tucson massacre?
Indeed, the Dearborn case comes just weeks after the Westboro Baptist Church won a landmark Supreme Court case protecting right to protest outside military funerals.
First Amendment expert Leonard Niehoff of the University of Michigan says Dearborn’s action amounts to a “Heckler’s Veto” — a scenario where all speech is silenced for fear of potential backlash.
This threat to creator’s core freedoms is already frighteningly real after Islamic extremists’ fatwa’s against Danish cartoonists for drawing the prophet Mohammed. Tragically for the Dearborn’s Muslim community, Ayatollah O’Reilly & Co.’s actions only reinforce the stereotype that even American Muslims are intolerant extremists — not just the Mideast fringe.
“Their action innocently played into Jones’ objectives, which is to paint Dearborn as a pro-Sharia city that’s oppressing Christians, which is of course not true,” protested Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Worthy’s action wrongly equates “the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim-Americans in Dearborn.”
Following the national outcry over the injustice, Mayor O’Reilly tried to backpedal, seizing on the pyro-pastor’s plans to return this week to protest his muzzling in a “free speech zone” in front of Dearborn City Hall.
“If he had done this in the first place, there would have been no issue to begin with,” O’Reilly said, as if the issue was merely restricting the time, place, and manner of the pastor’s protest. But this is disingenuous since 1) Jones must follow Somers ruling pending appeal, and 2) O’Reilly’s lawsuit was never an issue of time and place but an effort to shut Jones up by forcing him to post a $45,000 “peace bond” to pay for police protection.
That’s flat-out unconstitutional, says Wayne State’s Sedler. Police are paid to provide public safety. This was most famously confirmed, says Sedler, in the City of Forsyth County vs. National Movement (1992). Indeed, the precedent has deep roots in Michigan itself where past protests by Klan and Nazi groups were given police protection in Ann Arbor and Southfield.
“The First Amendment is only valid if it allows us to say what other people do not like,” Jones said at his trial — a sentiment echoed by scholars. Forgotten will be his drivel that the Quran “promotes terrorist activities around the world.”
But with its unconstitutional legal actions, Dearborn leadership now sounds more threatening to our liberties than a crazy Florida preacher. Jones will likely win his appeal. And Dearborn will have blown an opportunity to show the world that not all Muslims are anti-speech ayatollahs.
(More important than) Earth Day ( The Michigan View 04.22.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 22, 2011
Earlier this month, at a town-hall meeting in Pennsylvania, President Obama reflexively shamed a male member of the audience for the sin of owning a sport ute. The president mocked the owner for lacking the foresight to anticipate $4-a-gallon gas.
“I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs,” needled the president who himself arrived at the meeting in a gas-guzzling armored Caddy (Secret Service codename: The Beast) and a platoon of support SUVs. “You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon -(laughter) – you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.)”
Behold the scarlet letters S-U-V. This is what passes for shame in the 21st century town square. By contrast, President Obama has never publicly shamed American males for the sin of an 80 percent illegitimacy rate that is destroying inner cities like Detroit.
As America celebrates Earth Day – aka, Global Warming Awareness Day – fighting climate change is good. It is a holy. It is what Obama calls “one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation.” And it demonstrates how detached our government has become from its foundation of providing public safety and caring for society’s most vulnerable.
What is the greater moral challenge of our generation? Carbon emissions – or a family implosion that fuels the slaughter of thousands on America’s streets every year? A perceived threat that killed no one in 2010 – or a scourge that resulted in 308 murders in Detroit alone?
On Friday, President Obama will honor Earth Day. He would do better addressing the family crisis on the streets of Detroit.
He could set up his lectern in the middle of Hamilton Avenue., a four-lane broadway in Detroit just three blocks west of Woodward Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare. Like State Street or Wabash is to Chicago’s Miracle Mile, Hamilton was once a bustling merchant’s row serving the lively neighborhoods behind it as well as the larger metro area.
Today it is a flattened war zone. At midday its streets are lifeless — its once bustling storefronts boarded up, burned out, or simply vaporized with nothing but a grassy plot as their tombstone. The neighborhoods behind it look they’ve been through the Blitz, though children stir from the homes in the morning — scurrying across the fearsome landscape to take refuge in a nearby school.
This is a man-made disaster, not a mythical melting of the ice caps.
It is the result of government’s abdication of its basic duty — public protection. But more profoundly, it is the result of short-sighted, immoral Washington welfare polices that paid women to have children out-of-wedlock. Today, in vulnerable lower classes from whites in Appalachia to blacks in inner cities, family culture — the building block of society — is in foreclosure. It is most acute here in Detroit.
This disease, however, is curable — unlike global warming which, even if its shaky science is accepted, would barely slow were man to reduce emissions by Democrats’ desired 80 percent by 2050. If the first black president of the United States — a family man himself — retuned public shame to having children out of wedlock, Detroit would be transformed.
The lack of an engaged father in most inner city homes is the seed of every pathology in this unlivable city: lack of a high school education, adult illiteracy, rampant young male crime, and homicide..
This president could uniquely refocus America’s energy away from the false green crisis to the real crisis running red in America’s streets. This year, America will send $1.7 billion abroad to fight global warming in other countries. Wouldn’t that money be better spent fighting crime on Hamilton Avenue?
Payne: Free speech for Quran burners (The Michigan View 04.19.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 20, 2011
Publicity hogs like Quran-burner Terry Jones feed on publicity. It’s the fuel for their bonfires. So naturally, Wayne County authorities delivered him a tanker of gasoline this week by trying to force Jones to pay for his own police protection.
The attempt to stifle free speech only emboldened the pyro-pastor. Imagine an anti-war flag burner having to pay for police escort. Or an anti-Snyder union organizer being shut down for carrying a “Snyder is Hitler” poster. .
“Nothing has changed. Nothing will change,” exulted Jones of the misnamed Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, wrapping himself in the First Amendment.
Worse, the reckless Wayne prosecutor’s action feeds the stereotype of intolerant Muslims trying to silence anti-Mohammed speech. Muslim leader Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, immediately criticized the filing, recognizing the harm that Kim Worthy’s office was doing to American Muslims’ cause.
“Their action innocently played into Jones’ objectives, which is to paint Dearborn as a pro-Sharia city that’s oppressing Christians, which is of course not true,” he said. The court filing inaccurately tries to “equate the actions of zealots in Afghanistan with Muslim-Americans in Dearborn.”
Jones says he fears the “potential” of Sharia law in America without any evidence. Indeed, American Muslims have come to Michigan precisely because they want to escape the intolerance of the Mideast.
“This is not Afghanistan,” Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America in Derabron told Frank Beckmann on WJR-Radio Tuesday. “We do not want Sharia law here.”
Jones has the right to burn the Quran. Farrakhan has the right to burn the bible. Cartoonists have the right to draw Mohammed. If Americans silence free speech for fear of its consequences, then there is no end to fear – and then the extremists win.
And free speech loses.
Payne: Sieg Heil, warmingmongers! ( The Michigan View 04.18.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 18, 2011
In Old Europe, where Green is the state religion, Germany has been mobilizing against the devil global warming. Its leadership appears ready to go to war – with all the ruinous national sacrifice that will entail.
Pay attention, America, this is the vision of Stateside warmingmongers like Barack Obama and Jenny Granholm.
Having eliminated carbon-based fuels as a future source of fuel, Germany had planned to rely heavily on nuclear. But in the wake of Fukushima, Japan, even the right-leaning (a relative term in Far Left Deutschland) government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has abandoned the country’ last, best source of base-load energy.
Merkel’s government has announced a massive – immediate – expansion of renewable energies to make up for eliminating nukes. That means wind. Rather than leading, she is surrendering to a public spooked by green mythology that preaches they are under attack from carbon dioxide.
Merkel says the nation needs a pre-emptive strike to avert disaster. Polls says the public will sacrifice for a renewable future. Or not. A growing number of lawsuits and local referendum against thousands of landscape-choking wind turbines and high-voltage power masts indicates shallow public support for building a vast Green army.
“More than 80 percent of Germans want to see the country abandon nuclear energy. But there is one major caveat,” reports Der Spiegel.”When it comes to major energy projects, most Germans do not want them in their own backyard. Just as soon as plans are unveiled for mass wind turbines near residential areas, home owners and locals are quick to organize local campaigns to halt construction.”
But in war, democracy is often the first casualty.
Merkel plans to force the plan on the public, reports Der Spiegel, with a “master energy plan the federal government is currently hammering out following the closure of seven older nuclear power plants in the wake of Fukushima.” To transform the country from base-load power to a dependence on North Sea wind, this will involve a massive restructuring of the power grid. Obstacles like local ordinances will be trampled by central planning decree.
“The message is that Merkel’s government won’t tolerate opposition to its plans,” reports Der Spiegel of the authoritarian push that will also involve substantial energy price hikes, crippling the country’s manufacturing competitiveness. Wind power has also provoked to protest marches. Civil unrest will only accelerate as Germany goes into Green war mode.
Vast swaths of picturesque German forest – revered by Greens – will now be torn to shreds to make way for 260-foot power masts in order to feed the war effort. Paradoxically, pro-war greens oppose the lines, preferring instead that the lines be buries which will further drive up cots.
The warmingmongers’ zeal is blind to the fact that other nations have already lost the war.
“Take the example of the Netherlands,” continues Der Spiegel which tried a similar plan. “Opposition continues to grow, and the government’s goals for wind power are looking increasingly unrealistic. The Dutch don’t lack technological capacity when it comes to wind power. They simply don’t want it.”
This is where the United States is headed under Obama’s radical Green vision. High costs. Civil unrest. A strangling of local democracy. This may thrill utopians like Thomas Friedman. But it will be a grim war for the rest of us.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com
Levin’s housing crisis cover-up (The Michigan View 04.15.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 15, 2011
For the last two decades, Sen. Carl Levin and other Washington politicians forced banks and federal mortgage houses to finance thousands of risky loans to homeowners in Metro Detroit and beyond, setting the nation on course for the 2008 financial crisis. Now, incredibly, Levin is demanding an investigation of mortgage lenders to divert blame for a disaster that he and his colleagues created.
“This was a man-made crisis, the product of reckless risk-taking and rampant conflict of interest,” Levin said this week. “Had tougher regulations been in place earlier, it’d be a heck of a lot less severe.”
More precisely, it was a Washington-made crisis – the result of Levin & Co. softening regulations that corrupted the mortgage market. Give the senator the Cover-up of the Year Prize.
Levin’s permanent subcommittee on investigations have found what everyone knows – that nearly a third of Metro Detroit mortgages during the height of the real estate bubble fell into foreclosure by 2008. Though Wall Street banks and investors bear plenty of blame for the speculative housing bubble, at its root are Washington pols who watered down the lending standards of the twin federal mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and used the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) – long championed by Levin – to force lenders into distressed communities under the false premise that lenders were denying the poor the American Dream of owning a home.
Levin’s investigation paints “a disturbing picture of how investment bankers orchestrated what ended up being a foreclosure factory in many major cities, Detroit being one,” writes The Detroit News.
In fact, it was Levin & Co. who orchestrated a dangerous scheme forcing banks into risky loans so that Levin and his colleagues could take credit for rising home ownership.
“Congress designed Fannie and Freddie to serve both their investors and the political class,” writes George Mason University economist Russell Roberts in The Wall Street Journal. “Demanding that Fannie and Freddie do more to increase home ownership among poor people allowed Congress and the White House to subsidize low-income housing outside of the budget. It was a political free lunch.”
To help facilitate these sham loans, Levin’s colleagues (most famously Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank) then forced Fannie and Freddie to take on quotas of risky low-income loans, lowering their threshold of down-payments from 25 to less than 10 percent in violation of long-held standards.
This allowed mortgage lenders to immediately dump their risky loans into the secondary market, beginning a domino effect that would ultimately crush U.S. capital markets.
“The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) did the same thing with traditional banks. It encouraged banks to serve two masters — their bottom line and the so-called common good,” continues Roberts.
And who was one of the CRA’s greatest champions? Senator Carl Levin.
“The Community Reinvestment Act is a way to encourage banks to live up to their public obligation,” roared Levin in 1999 in opposing efforts to scale back CRA as evidence mounted it was a house of cards. “Nationwide the CRA has been recognized as an effective way to increase credit availability in underserved areas. CRA has also encouraged a dramatic increase in home ownership by low and moderate income individuals.”
Levin claims the risky loans were packaged and sold to investors as solid investments, the result of collusion between ratings agencies and Wall Street. What Levin does not say is that he himself encouraged this collusion.
“Both small and large banks in Michigan have received outstanding CRA ratings,” said Levin in 1999, praising the very same rating agencies. He explicitly opposed attempts to scale back the CRA’s power to force lenders into risky areas. “I will not support a bill that weakens a program that has been so important to community development efforts in Michigan and nationally.”
Now, Levin is trying to disguise himself as a cop stumbling on a crime – the better to scrub the scene of his fingerprints and plant evidence that it was all the lenders’ fault. But watchdogs are barking. On WJR-Radio Thursday. Frank Beckmann read from the 1999 evidence of Levin’s crime.
“Can you spell hypocrisy?” concluded Beckmann on WJR.
That’s L-E-V-I-N.
Snyder settles for a single ( the Michigan View 04.13.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 13, 2011
The Nerd is learning to play politics. On Tuesday, Governor Snyder listened to his Senate first base coach and took a safe single rather than trying to stretch a double. A pity he never tried to swing for the fences.
The line score of this week’s budget game (featuring Republicans vs. Republicans) will credit Team Snyder with a savvy political victory with the Nerd determining that Michigan’s middle class would scream less about a personal tax hike to 4.35 percent than would the senior lobby about losing their generous pension reduction. A survey of key Lansing players suggests Snyder just assured that his budget will pass.
But in so doing, Republicans have squandered a historic opportunity to win bold reform of Michigan tax and labor policies.
Don’t get me wrong, the Snyder plan is a vast improvement over eight years of failed Granholmnomics. But by defensively backpedaling from reducing the personal income tax rate – while slashing corporate taxes – Republicans have just confirmed the stereotype that they are the Party of Big Business. At a time when the GOP has the Lansing playing field to itself – the result of huge electoral majorities – it is negotiating ITSELF out of reinventing tax cuts and Big Labor savings.
“The plan continues the elimination of the jobs-killing Michigan Business Tax and ends the double taxation on small businesses,” reads a Snyder press release. Spoken like Snyder the conservative businessman. But Michigan could have benefited from Snyder the risk-taking entrepreneur. Businessmen large and small will bless replacing the unsavory dog’s breakfast of the Michigan Business Tax they’ve been forced to eat. That’s good for a jobs-starved state.
But what about individual taxpayers still burdened with paying expensive state employee union costs?
“Snyder has missed a chance to broaden the tax base, lower the rate, right-size employee benefits, and make it harder for the senior lobby to complain,” says Leon Drolet, Chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, the state’s largest pro-taxpayer group. “He would have made (former Gov.) Engler jealous. Now he’s just struggling to make a double.”
Indeed, the state Democratic Party quickly pounced on the opportunity calling the GOP compromise “a fresh coat of paint on the same plan to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, working families, and students while giving billions away to big corporations.”
Snyder appears to be aware of the problem at least. “Upon passage of this plan, Michigan will have the 14th best income tax,” his press release adds, “and the 8th most generous treatment of retirement income – among states with income taxes.”
“We’re Number 14!” Not very catchy is it?
Alas, Snyder’s compromise veers off the admirable flat tax course he first championed. He was abandoned by GOP legislators spooked by angry seniors with generous pension exemptions. But instead of pushing Snyder to act on his conservative impulses to enact a true flat tax by cutting rates and closing loopholes, Republicans backpedaled. There are no Paul Ryans or Chris Christies in this crowd. “Moderate” Rick Snyder, it turns out, is the right-wing alternative.
Now, Snyder’s flat tax has loopholes that read like this: “The new proposal would exempt those aged 67 and older from the pension tax. For people 60 to 66 years old, the first $20,000 would be exempt for an individual and the first $40,000 for a couple. Pensions would be taxed at the full rate for retirees aged 59 and younger. But once any Michigan resident turns 67, income exemptions of $20,000 for individuals and $40,000 for couples would apply.”
That’s simplified taxation?
To make up for the lost pension revenue, Snyder now finds himself with another $150 million in cuts to make. Though unspecified, these cuts, sources say, will be across-the- board nicks – $20 million in corrections here, $20 million in community colleges there. Missed will be another golden opportunity to address union fat cats who continue to enjoy pay and benefits well beyond private sector employees who pay their ticket.
While Mr. Nice Guy has tried to avoid union confrontation, the playing field around him has changed dramatically. Unions have turned on Snyder anyway, protesting his proposed cuts as well as his tough new financial manager rules. Meanwhile, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio – Midwest competitors all – have blown past Snyder with transformative collective bargaining reforms. Snyder must get serious about unions if he is to make structural changes to Michigan’s budget.
Those changes may still come. But for now, Snyder is content to beat out groundballs rather than bit home runs. “Michigan doesn’t just need a new model with tweaked headlights,” says Drolet, switching to another favorite Detroit analogy, autos. “We need a new model.”
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com.
Payne: Stabenow solves the Eastern Market ‘crisis’ ( The Michigan View 04.11.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 11, 2011
You think Michigan’s economy is in crisis? That there’s an entitlement crisis? A spending crisis? That the Mideast is in crisis? Small potatoes.
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow wants to solve the Eastern Market crisis.
“U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow says she is working with officials of Detroit’s Eastern Market to help them increase the number of days the outdoor and shed merchants are open for business,” reports The Detroit News’ Dave Shepardson of the downtown Saturday farmer’s market.
Yes, Senator Stabenow has spotted the real crisis threatening America: Businesses in the permanent shops around the market’s perimeter are open weekdays . . . but the sheds and open-air parts are not!
“Why should Eastern Market only be open on Saturday? Why not Sunday? Why not every day?” demanded Stabenow at a Detroit Economic Club appearance, throwing her weight around as the new chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The chairwoman aims to fix this historic injustice – with your tax dollars. Stabenow is seeding the market with funding from the U.S. Agriculture Department that will add two new Detroit neighborhood markets and boost advertising for other markets at Wayne State, the North End, the east side, and elsewhere.
Remember that the next time Democrats scream that the federal budget has been cut to the bone.
“It’s difficult to get new markets started,” mumbles Eastern Market President Dan Carmody, his lips clamped firmly on the federal teat. Naturally, then, we taxpayer have to make it less hard. Heaven forbid that the market has to prove it self in the, well, market.
.”I told the mayor I’d never thought I’d be helping him from the Agriculture committee,” Stabenow says of her plan to micromanage market business hours.
Michigan’s junior senator is just getting started. She has more dreams of government-funded utopia. Two permanent food halls (just like Philly and D.C.!). A 35,000-square-foot north hall with a new restaurant. A Whole Foods store. Making Michigan Number One in pickle processing. She wants to make the next generation of cellulosic ethanol biofuel. And so on.
Playing with other people’s money is fun.
And so is E85 ethanol, which Stabenow has decided is the fuel of the future. “There has to be a couple of choices there,” she declares whether consumers want the choice or not. Whether it makes economic sense or not. What’s important is Debbie Stabenow thinks it’s a good idea.
Lucky for Michigan, its junior senator sees the big picture.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com.
Payne: Budget deal winners & losers (The Michigan VIew 04.10.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 10, 2011
WINNER: Republicans. “Boehner has achieved more than just a short-term budget victory – in his first three months as speaker, he’s helped turn the entire Washington dialogue into a debate about the size and scope of government,” reports the liberal Politico.”It’s a big deal. It shows a great deal of leadership,” said Michigan Rep. Dave Camp, Ways and Means Committee Chairman, as GOPers stood and cheered at Boehner’s announcement of $39 B in cuts.
LOSER: Democrats. “The history of offers on this bill goes something like this. Democrats first offered no cuts, then $4 billion, then $6.5 billion, then $33 billion, then settled at $38.5 billion,” writes Fox News reporter Carl Cameron in an article headlined: “Who Won the Shutdown Showdown? It Wasn’t Even Close.”
WINNER: The Tea Party. Despite the grumblings of tea partiers Michelle Bachman and Judson Phillips (the founder of Tea Party Nation, who tweeted Boehner is “selling us out”), this deal is a victory for a movement that has helped GOPers refocus on their core brand: economics. In fact, by keeping the pressure on cuts – not devisive GOP social polices – the fiscal Tea Party movement helped Boehner win more cuts than he originally sought.
LOSER: Policy riders. In the end, Democrats were left crowing about eliminating Planned Parenthood funding and EPA climate change regulations Still, those provisions aren’t dead – just kicked to a new Senate battleground (where the EPA regs were upheld this week despite significant Democrat defections).
WINNER: John Boehner. This is significant. Movements must have strong leaders. They must know how to govern. And Boehner comes out of the shutdown a formidable leader which will help the tea party-flavored GOPers as they take the Ryan budget into battle these next crucial months. A veteran of Gingrich’s disastrous 1995 shutdown, the seasoned Ohio legislator “avoided one major error made by Gingrich- he didn’t turn it into a personal grudge match. Boehner said on several occasions this week that he ‘liked’ Obama and Reid, describing their dispute as centered on policy, not based on personality, reports Politico. “All told, the budget deal was peppered with Boehner’s priorities.”
LOSER: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The man defines the term “loser.” Reid, who brought the country to this precipice because he NEVER passed a budget last year while taking the position that there should be ZERO cuts in the budget, tried to claim victory Friday night. “This is historic, what we’ve done,” Reid said. Huh?
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.co
The new, post-jobs bank GM: Hot rod or lemon? ( the Michigan View 04.08.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 8, 2011
It took a life-threatening crisis and a bankruptcy, but as General Motors begins hiring in the new labor era, it has put its perverse UAW jobs bank behind it. For now.
“It’s the perfect system,” says Center for Automotive Research (CAR) economist Sean McAlinden of GM’s “2009 modification to the 2007 labor agreement” which re-defined employee layoffs. “The jobs bank is dead, dead, dead.” The post-bankruptcy elimination of GM’s notorious jobs bank was key to helping a new General restructure in the midst of its worst crisis in history — a crisis brought on in part by crippling labor costs. Now, as the repaired giant gains steam and the recession recedes the mirror, its 2,000 laid off employees are returning to a very different GM.
The good news? The General’s labor costs are now in the same zip code as longtime rival Toyota at $58 an hour (versus $56). And jobs bank dead weight is gone.
The bad news? For all its reforms, GM is still not on a level playing field with its scrappy transplant competitors. The UAW is still in the Detroit shop. And its members are getting restless. Again.
GM’s layoff policy alone is evidence of the transformation this company has gone through. Looking back it’s hard to believe Detroit once paid people not to work. At virtually full pay. At virtually full benefits. In perpetuity.
Intended “to never lay people off and never close plants” even as the company hemorrhaged market share, McAlinden says the UAW-designed jobs bank accelerated GM’s fall. It added billions in fixed costs. And it forced GM CEO Rick Wagoner to keep plants churning out unnecessary product for sale to rental fleets — just to avoid the costlier option of closing shifts and throwing workers into jobs banks. This Hobson’s choice, however, only flooded the market with more cars, thus forcing dealers to increase incentives to sell them, thus squeezing profit in a downward price spiral.
Wow. Were we really there just three years ago?
Today, the 2,000 workers coming out of GM layoff had no jobs bank. Instead, workers (depending on seniority) get 75 percent of pay for 40 weeks. After that, 50 percent. After that? Nada. Add federal unemployment, which makes up half layoff pay, and GM’s overhead is much more attractive.
Compare that to non-union Toyota which has a policy of not laying off anyone. Instead, workers are simply reassigned within the company. That may build loyalty —- and keep the unions at bay — but it is costly.
“Toyota’s reassignment policy is a de facto jobs bank,” says McAlinden. “If they fire them, then they fear the UAW could organize them.”
A GM spokesperson says that the company prefers its layoff policy to Toyota’s policy. Well, maybe. McAlinden says that’s politic corporate talk. In truth, GM couldn’t reassign if it wanted to because — 2009 modification agreement or no — UAW work rules still cramp Big Three workplace flexibility. Seniority rights stifle the ability to move workers by need. An electrician can’t be reassigned from one department to another. And so on.
“Its’ a mess,” says McAlinden of work rules. “But it’s a wash,” he concludes of the difference between GM layoff and Toyota reassignment policies.
The real problem isn’t Toyota.
It’s Hyundai and Kia.
The Korean transplants are what the Japanese were 25 years ago: the cost leaders. At $40 an hour, the new kids are trouble for GM, Ford, Chrysler. . . and Toyota. And they are gaining market share fast. Hyundai was the only manufacturer to actually increase sales during the Great Recession as it put out quality, affordable automobiles.
When asked what the company’s layoff policy is, a Hyundai spokesman pauses, then says: “I don’t know. We’ve never had to lay anyone off.”
As GM recovers, it still carries the burden of pressure from the inside as well as the outside. The foreign transplants must fight the competition at its gates. The Big Three also have to fight the UAW threat inside the gates. For example, 40 union officials are employed per Big Three plant just to monitor labor contracts. That’s 40 paychecks the transplants don’t have to pay.
In the global economy of the 21st century, cost competitiveness is key. An early test of the new labor era will be looming contract talks in which the Big Three want to put workers on a “flexible compensation” (not fixed pay) model similar to what Japanese companies employ (McAlinden says 40 percent of pay is bonus in Japan, 12-14 percent in the U.S.).
Meanwhile, the UAW — led by its thumb-in-the-eye leader Bob King —- seems determined to fight yesterday’s battles. “Our people have given enough, have sacrificed enough, and are fed up with it,” reads a bold-faced UAW leaflet distributed at an Ohio engine plant. “We want or COLAs back, our bonuses back, and all out other suspended benefits.”
GM has emerged from bankruptcy a lean, mean fighting machine. Trouble is, the opposition is still the rank and file.
Obama: Guzzler-in-Chief (The Michigan View 04.04.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 4, 2011
Barack Obama’s “green” energy policy is anything but the politics of change. By exempting himself from his own federal fleet standard, locking in ethanol subsidies for Big Corn, and guaranteeing government as the buyer for government-mandated electric cars, the president’s plan is a mess that leads America down a dead-end street.
As we reported on the View March 31, there’s a catch (isn’t there always?) to President Obama’s expensive announcement that the feds will replace the entire 600,000 vehicle fleet with hybrid-electric vehicles – which cost more than conventional gas-powered cars – by 2015.
“But . . . under a clever loophole in the mandate, the Guzzler-in-Chief will still get to ride around in his big SUVs,” we wrote. Yes, President Obama gets to keep his guzzling Caddy (Secret Service codename “The Beast”) and its fleet of support SUVs because they are capable of running on subsidized E85 ethanol.
Detroit News’ bureau chief Dave Shepardson has more detail in his April 1 story, “Presidential limousine, security vehicles exempt from fed ‘green’ vehicle policy”:
“The U.S. Secret Service said today that some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt from President Barack Obama’s directive that all federal vehicles purchased starting 2015 be advanced technology models. Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the directive wouldn’t apply to vehicles used for some law enforcement or security reasons by various federal agencies.”
“Certain specialized vehicles including those with law enforcement and security specifications are not subject to this directive,” Novy told Shepardson. That includes Obama’s Caddy and other SUVs in the presidential motorcade. So too law enforcement vehicles.
The Nanny-in-Chief has a penchant for not practicing what he preaches. There was that Super Bowl menu, for example. . . .
“Obama (transportation policy) actually kills two payoffs with one stone,” writes The Michigan View’s Manny Lopez. “First to the enviro-activists and second to the nation’s corn growers and fuel blenders who feed at the subsidy trough like few others.”
That is, Obama fulfills his promise to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015 by putting in place a government program to buy them all. Even then, however, electrics would not be practical for all government uses (just as electrics are impractical for the larger public), so Obama carves out an ethanol loophole.
“No one buys ethanol for their vehicles, primarily because it is 30 percent less efficient, costs more at the pump and actually is worse on the environment to produce one gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gas,” continues Lopez. No matter. Government simply mandates its production (thus paying off ethanol-producer Archers Daniels Midland, a major Democratic Party contributor) – then provides the government fleet to use it.
Even then, it is unlikely the giant SUVs used by Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for example, will use E85. There is only one E85 pump in all of Washington DC (at the Pentagon) – and even fewer outside the beltway where the president takes his fleet of SUVs on every trip.
The only “change” in Obama’s new energy policy is the shakedown of taxpayers’ wallets. That’s a lot of change to buy electric cars and subsidize ethanol production.
Stabenow: Warming regs threaten jobs (like mine) (The Michigan View 04.02.11)
Posted by hpayne on April 2, 2011
Armageddon will have to wait until after the next election.
In 2009, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow told the Detroit News editorial board that fighting the climate crisis was her top priority.
“Climate change is very real,” she said echoing other Gorebama disciples that unless a cap and trade law was passed immediately, the world was doomed to floods, drought, hurricanes and species extinction on an apocalyptic scale. “Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes.”
But now with her 2012 re-election in trouble and Big Government in foul odor with the public, Stabenow has done a 180 – asking that the EPA delay its regulatory diktat to strangle American manufacturing with carbon caps. “My amendment is a common-sense approach,” she said in a statement this week.
But Stabenow’s retreat is more than just a cynical election ploy. This is no Left Coast tree-hugger. This is the surrender of a major green disciple from a major industrial state who has loudly advocated for global warming legislation not just because she saw it as the planet’s salvation – but as the new economic model for growth in Rust Belt states like Michigan.
Stabenow’s reversal on EPA regulation is admission that climate change is neither a crisis nor a jobs engine. In other words, a key green politician has just inadvertently admitted that global warming is a scam.
1) The crisis scam. Leaders of the green movement have repeatedly compared global warming to the Holocaust. “Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet,” says prominent global warming strategist and Goracle ally James Hansen. “The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.” Imagine putting off fighting the Nazi Holocaust because it was an election year.
By subjugating carbon caps to the election calendar, Stabenow admits that global warming is important politics, not an important issue.
2) The green economic boom. This is the crucial surrender of Stabenow. “Forget about whether global warming exists,” Stabenow told the News in 2009 after stumbling over the science. “My focus is on jobs.” The Michigan senator has been a crusader for global warming because she sees it as economically beneficial – contrary to economists who say that EPA regulation would be a disaster for the state’s coal energy and manufacturing sectors. Stabenow has used cap and trade to steer thousands of new, green manufacturing jobs to her union supporters.
But in delaying the EPA’s carbon crusade, Stabenow is admitting that carbon regulation is a jobs drag. In a coming election campaign about jobs, jobs, jobs, Stabenow has just stuck a knife in the Green Doctrine that more regulation is a jobs engine.
“For years, I have worked diligently to develop and implement a 21st century manufacturing strategy that will create jobs in the new clean energy economy,” crowed Stabenow in advocating stringent carbon caps two years ago.
The clean energy economy is dead because it threatens jobs. Beginning with Debbie Stabenow’s job.
Payne: Obama’s electric shopping spree ( The Michigan View 03.31.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 31, 2011
It’s fun to play with other people’s money.
With Washington groaning under record federal deficits, President Obama Wednesday unveiled another pricey plan to spend taxpayer dollars — potentially doubling the cost of the government’s vehicle fleet by mandating that all 600,000 cars be hybrids and electrics (so-called “advanced technology vehicles”) by 2015. But . . . under a clever loophole in the mandate, the Guzzler-in-Chief will still get to ride around in his big SUVs.
With hybrid sales dropping, 35 mpg Smart sales crippled, and Americans returning to SUVs, the president’s Road of Dreams — 1 million electrics sold by 2015 — looks very much in jeopardy, as does the likelihood that automakers will meet absurd, fleet-wide 35.5 mpg standards. The president’s answer? Build them . . . and I will come (with bags of taxpayer cash).
Of current vehicle sales, the average mpg is only 22.2 — a long way from the mandated 35.5 required just four years from now. But the government’s purchases provide a big loophole to allow manufacturers to add enough credits to keep from paying massive fines. “The policy question today is how to encourage more consumers to buy these high mpg vehicles,” Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “Government fleet sales help answer that question.”
Obama’s new diktat, announced in a Washington speech Wednesday, fits his centralized planning goal of internal-combustion-engine elimination by 2025 with a draconian, 62 mpg standard. A global warming zealot, Obama had promised a transformation of the U.S. auto industry — even as he has taken credit for GM’s return to profitability thanks to increased light-truck sales.
Obama’s auto fancy, however, will be enormously expensive to taxpayers: the $41,000 plug-in Chevy Volt costs more than double the gas-powered, $17,000 Chevy Cruze built on the same platform. Obama already whacks the piñata public to pay $7,500 to the (generally wealthy) buyers of each Volt.
Of, course, many Washington officials — including the president — are transported in giant, gas-guzzling SUVs. Obama’s 10 mpg Caddy — codenamed “The Beast” by the Secret Service — is regularly escorted by a fleet of giant GM SUVs.
But Obama’s proposal allows for the continued purchase of such vehicles under its “advanced technology vehicle” standard which the feds designate as electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles and (wait for it!) vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol. Since most SUVs are E85 capable — even if the fuel is very difficult to find — the pols don’t have to give up their big cars.
“Here’s the bottom line. We will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we get serious about a long-term policy for secure, affordable energy,” Obama said. “We cannot keep going from shock to trance on the issue of energy security, rushing to propose action when gas prices rise, then hitting the snooze button when they fall again.”
The only “serious” way to do this would be to raise gas prices to $7-a-gallon as in Europe where small cars (if not, electrics) abound. But that would be political suicide. And there’s re-election to be won in 2012.
Snyder’s sagging agenda (the Michigan View 3.27.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 27, 2011
Less than four months after a landslide election swept Republicans into power in Lansing, the party’s agenda is gravely ill.
In a stunning rebuke to their own governor, Senate Republicans introduced an alternative budget last week that takes a big swipe at Governor Snyder’s cornerstone plan of tax simplification. This is the sort of rebuke you would expect from Democrats if they held the Senate. But the governor’s own allies?
Led by squishy moderate Randy Richardville, Senate Republicans have always been suspect as a reform ally. And their counter-proposal is a retreat from their mandate for change. Rather than pushing their governor – who has courageously offered a new direction – to be even more aggressive on tax reform and bloated union benefits, the GOPers backslide towards politics-as-usual higher taxes and special interest loopholes.
But the self-proclaimed One Tough Nerd really has himself to blame for this mess.
By proposing a flat tax that did not significantly lower the income tax rate or pare public employee union excess – while targeting the pension tax break of a politically-powerful seniors lobby – the Guv made a crucial political mistake. As a result, Snyder finds himself fighting his own party. Contrast that with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who successfully rallied his Republican base for his reforms.
“It’s certainly true that Snyder’s fiscal initiative is receiving far less heat than Walker’s,” wrote Leon Drolet in a prescient article for The View March 8. “But Walker’s proposal has done something that Snyder’s will likely never do: united the state Republican House to vote for it. Walker’s plan will probably pass the senate and become law.
Drolet argued that a more aggressive stance by Snyder to pare union collective bargaining privileges would have rallied Republicans. Wisconsin-like union protests against the union reforms Snyder has proposed failed to united GOPers behind him.
Drolet says Snyder needs to go back to the drawing board. “Compare the possible $380 million Snyder may be asking in government benefit cuts to the $900 million he is directly demanding from the pension tax hike,” he wrote in arguing for a change in focus to budget cuts. “Governor Snyder must regroup and re-launch.”
For a governor who champions the fairness of his plan, the unfair sacrifice of taxpayers vs. union fat cats is hard to stomach. Snyder could redraw as Drolet proposes, or. . . .
Snyder could turbo-charge the growth agenda he has laid out. He says he wants a flat tax. A true flat tax would lower rates to say, three percent – numbing the pain of closing all tax loopholes. And, most importantly, it would unite Republicans.
Snyder campaigned as a bipartisan governor. But union-patsy Democratic allies are nowhere to be found. The governor is learning the hard way why his Republican base is so important. Without GOP unity, Snyder’s agenda is suddenly very much in trouble.
Payne: Granholm’s big payoff ( The Michigan View 3.25.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 25, 2011
After years of funneling millions in taxpayer money to Big Business as governor, Jennifer Granholm cashed in Thursday as Dow handed her a six-figure position on its board. Granholm’s administration handed more than $200 million in tax breaks to Dow and its subsidiaries.
In short, this smells to high heaven like a payoff.
“Granholm’s track record fits very well with Dow’s focus,” said Dow Chemical spokeswoman Rebecca Bentley. That’s an understatement. Dow used Granholm to funnel millions to its green projects such as batteries as well as getting the governors’ signature on a bill that gave rate subsidies to subsidiary Hemlock Semiconductor. In addition, Granholm helped steer a $161 million in Obama Administration energy grants to build its new Midland battery plant. Granholm chipped in $180 million in state tax breaks to the project.
And given those ties to the president ” and Obama’s shared vision of a radical American green reformation” Dow knows the continued value of its Granholm investment. Dow board members typically receive compensation of between $150,000 and $200,000 ” as much as Granholm made as governor.
The stench was so bad from the board deal that even liberals blanched.
“Gov. Granholm walked out of office and right onto the (Dow Chemical) Board of Directors,” said Michelle Hurd Riddick of theLone Tree Council, Bay City-based environmental group. “There’s a revolving door between government and industry.”
“During Granholm’s time as governor,” reported the Saginaw News, “Dow benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax credits, including more than $100 million in 2010 for Dow Kokam and Dow Powerhouse Solar Shingle development.”
Dow spokesman Bentley laughably added that the governor who presided over a doubling of Michigan’s unemployment rate “has a proven track record of creating jobs and understanding economic development.” Well, Dow jobs and development, anyway.
“During her tenure as governor, Granholm launched initiatives focused on diversifying and transforming the state’s economy by adding new, emerging sectors such as clean energy to Michigan’s economic portfolio, “said Dow CEO Andrew N. Liveris.
Democrats are the party of the little guy? Jennifer Granholm is laughing all the way to the bank.
Payne: Media meltdown ( The Michigan View 3.24.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 24, 2011
After Japan’s devastating March 11 earthquake, mainstream media headlines warned of an epic meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant threatening the future of nuclear power. In fact, what the world witnessed was a meltdown in MSM credibility. Like the recent hysteria over the Toyota “instant acceleration” and global warming, the Fukushima plant crisis exposed a media ignorant of basic technical facts, unwilling to consult engineering experts, and eager to panic the public with incomplete reporting.
In short, the Fukushima nuclear episode is evidence that — when it comes to reporting on scientific issues — mainstream outlets from the New York Times to CNN to the Associated Press are no more credible than National Enquirer reports of alien abductions.
The media-political assault on nukes will have profound consequences for Michigan, a state that relies on cheap, reliable energy to power its industrial base, including four nuclear reactors. With the zealously anti-carbon Granholm and Obama Administrations crippling coal generation, utilities have won re-monopolization of state energy markets in order to afford expensive nuke construction to meet future global warming regulations. But this week’s media panic will further set back an industry that hasn’t built a U.S. nuke plant in over 30 years.
On March 15, the United Kingdom’s chief independent scientific advisor, John Beddington, informed the British Embassy in Tokyo that radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant was a local, not national (much less international) problem.
Beddington’s conclusions echoed those made by MIT mechanical engineer Josef Oehmen — and nuclear engineers around the world — just one day after the tsunami wiped out backup power to the plant. The consensus? Fukushima’s construction and radiation hazards were well known and of concern only to citizens within a 12-mile radius of the plant.
Yet, few of these experts’ voices were heard in the mainstream media.
Instead, American and European viewers were fed a steady diet of panic and warnings of a nuclear Armageddon that threatened millions from Tokyo, 150 miles to Fukushima’s south, to the West Coast of the United States and beyond.
Rather than watch-dogging the public interest, media outlets became megaphones for irresponsible comments by pols from European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger (“an apocalypse!”) to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Yukiya Amano (Japan was racing an “extremely serious disaster”). The Associated Press reported on authorities acting “frantically to avert an environmental catastrophe.” The New York Times warned of “contaminated food.” The London Financial Times feared a “food safety crisis” and winds “carrying radiation to Tokyo.” The Drudge Report featured a London Daily Telegraph headline warning “Just 48 hours to avoid another Chernobyl.'”
All these reports lacked scientific foundation. The press might as well have reported “Three-headed baby snatchers land from Mars!”
Scientist Beddington explained that the only people likely to receive doses of radiation with health consequences were on-site Fukushima workers. He emphasized that the population outside of the 12-mile evacuation zone need not worry about contamination.
“The first thing to say about that is do we have any concerns now in terms of human health? Only in the immediate vicinity of the reactors,” said Beddington. Indeed, the success of the plant’s redundant safety systems against a historic one-two punch of 9.0 quake and 30-foot tsunami is a success. Not a single life has been lost due to radiation release.
While MSM outlets raged about radiation releases, they uniformly failed to put radiation in context. But humans are constantly exposed to radiation. Average human background radiation exposure is 3,750 microsieverts per year. A CAT scan alone amounts to 7,000 microsieverts and adverse health effects from radiation exposure have not been detected under 100,000 microsieverts. Only one worker has received that dose at Fukushima.
Beyond the plant, radiation dosage briefly spiked as high as 5 microsieverts per hour in Tokai village, which is close to the plant. Otherwise, background radiation has been a steady 0.036 – 0.056 microsieverts reports World Nuclear News, a reliable nuclear news site.
These crucial numbers have been nonexistent in MSM coverage.
The media hysteria was eerily reminiscent of the stampede to convict Toyota of electronically-induced instant acceleration just a year ago. Media headlines trumpeted Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s unsupportable claim that “Toyotas are unsafe” and whipped up a daily frenzy over Toyota mishaps. Toyota engineers protested that electronics were not the issue but their voices of reason went unheard.
An exhaustive, year-long NASA-led investigation confirmed that the MSM fear-mongering was baseless. Significantly, however, the media engaged in no soul-searching to assess why they had gotten the story so wrong. They simply moved on to the next panic.
Not surprisingly, engineers hold the media in contempt. Disgusted by press reports of Fukushima, MIT mechanical engineer Oehmen took to the Web to explain basic facts and point an accusatory finger at the media.
“I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single (!) report that was accurate and free of errors,” he wrote March 12. “By ‘not free of errors’ I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are built and operated. I have read a three-page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.”
If any institution should have touted the facts of nuclear energy it should have been pols and media allies who have spent the last 20 years panicking people about global warming’s threats of devastating weather patterns and species extinction.
The most reliable non-carbon energy source is nuclear, yet the media’s savaging of the technology last week exposed a press agenda that is not just anti-carbon — but anti-industry. In an age when the industrialized world is dependent on high tech to sustain its high standard of living, a Luddite press is a liability.
The media must educate itself. In the meantime, MSM panics like climate change, auto defects, and nuclear apocalypse should be ignored.
Obama Kills Satire ( 03.10.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 10, 2011
“Pretty heavy ad hominem attacks on Obama lately. You join the KKK? Or did you run out of ‘toon substance? You criticize Obama for using a teleprompter?” reads a typical email from a Democratic reader today (in addition to my post as View editor, I draw local cartoons for the News – and national cartoons for some 40 syndicated clients).
Aside from the standard Democrat meat that any critic of Obama is a racist, the reader is incredulous that a political cartoonist would criticize the president of the United States.
If you’ve been watching late-night comedy lately, you might well think the presidency is off limits. In the partisan universe occupied by SNL, The Daily Show, David Letterman, and Jay Leno, Obama jokes have become an endangered species. It is without precedent in my 25-year career.
SNL used to be the benchmark for presidential caricature – Phil Hartman nailed Bill Clinton and Dana Carvey made a career out of Bush Senior – but I can’t remember the last skit in which the program lampooned our leader. Obscured by Bill Hader’s hilarious parody of Charlie Sheen this weekend, for example, there was nary a mention of a president who is deeply unpopular, a spinless joke for avoiding hard budget choices, and whose haughty, uplifted chin and dependency on a teleprompter are the natural stuff of impersonation.
Yet not even Seth Meyers – SNL’s fake headline news anchor – could find any humor in our current White House bumbler-in-chief.
Stewart, Leno, et al are little better. Stewart – the most talented of the lot – has become a tired partisan. On Tuesday, his team even tried to make heroes of the cowardly Wisconsin legislators holed up in Illinois. Really.
President Obama has been the death of late night satire. But, I reassured my “You join the KKK?” reader, I have not succumbed. I am no jester to the Obama court. Where’s the fun of satire if you can’t lampoon the president?
Dingell mute on Wisconsin hate speech (The Michigan View 03.09.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 10, 2011
A little over a month ago, Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, warned of the need to turn down the volume on political speech lest it result in more violence like the Tucson massacre.
“I saw the district of Gabrielle Giffords has a crosshairs put on it,” Dingell said, taking to the House floor to blame Sarah Palin and Republicans for the shooting of Democratic Rep. Giffords by an apolitical, mentally-disturbed Jared Laughner. “As a lifetime rifleman and shooter, I know what crosshairs signify when you put them on somebody and I know what happened.'”
Now, as Democrats’ Big Labor allies flood the streets of Madison, Wisconsin with placards drawing crosshairs over Republican Governor Scott Walker and Democratic pols urging blood in the streets, Dingell has gone silent.
The stark refusal of Democrats to condemn the hate speech in Wisconsin lays bare their campaign for a “new civility” (as President Obama called it) as a fraud. The ugly truth is that Democrats used the shooting of Miss Giffords for political gain.
Big Labor’s Wisconsin stand has been charged with hate. “Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” said Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Massachusetts, in rallying a pro-labor crowd against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. As public employees have laid siege to the Madison capital, signs compared Walker to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Other signs drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker’s head, with the caption “Don’t Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker”
Yet none of this has drawn the slightest rebuke from Democrats or their allies in the Mainstream Media. In a 180-degree pivot from the civility demanded in the wake of Tucson, the Left has lost its voice.
“Members of this body have a duty to speak up — as do members of the media — who have been saying these kinds of things,” Dingell thundered on the House floor January 12. “(They) will lead us into a time when we will create a threat not just to the lives and well-being of our members but also to the lives and well-being of this country and its debates.”
Yet he has not issued even a written statement condemning “these kind of things” in Wisconsin.
“What I’m hopeful for that if people involved in hate speech will think twice now,” added Dingell’s Michigan colleague, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, after the Tucson shooting. “It’s totally appropriate to have strong feelings on both sides of every issue, but words matter and when someone who is unstable hears those words, they risk inciting someone.”
She too has been struck mute in the wake of Wisconsin.
Indeed, Democrats and the MSM think civility only applies to the Tea Party. Unlike Wisconsin, not a sign or off-color word uttered by Republican supporters has gone unnoticed in a year-log campaign to smear Republican activists as a fringe element.
Last March, as thousands protested on Capitol Hill in the days before the passage of Obamacare, CBS’s Nancy Cordes slammed it as “a weekend filled with incivility,” reports the Media Research Center. World News anchor Diane Sawyer painted Tea Partiers as a violent gang, with “protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets.” ABC anchor Charles Gibson complained that “protesters brought pictures of President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache to a town hall meeting.” Their reaction to Wisconsin’s hate speech? Nothing.
The lesson of Tucson was that lone, isolated nuts like Laughner are capable of terrible violence. . . and that one of Congress’ most senior representatives, his party, and a partisan media see assassination attempts as opportunities to exploit for political gain.
Tax cut slam dunk ( The Michigan View 03.07.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 7, 2011
The best defense is a good offense. By restoring a crucial tax cut, Governor Rick Snyder can go back on the offensive against a barrage of criticism from the political and media establishment over his budget.
Snyder’s budget eliminates the personal income tax cut to 3.9 percent scheduled for 2015, a cut that would have erased Jennifer Granholm’s unpopular – and ineffective – tax hike to 4.35 percent in 2007. The governor is now reaping the whirlwind of that fundamental mistake in his otherwise admirable state budget proposal.
By halting the reduction at 4.25 percent, Snyder not only has missed an opportunity to separate himself from his tax-happy predecessor, it has robbed him of crucial political capital as he lowers business tax rates while closing personal tax loopholes on pension, property, and personal exemptions.
The effect is that Snyder is arguing for a tax hike on individuals to pay for business tax breaks.
“Snyder’s plan represents a major shift in the tax burden to individuals, in order to pay for a $1.73 billion tax cut for businesses,” says the liberal, influential Michigan think tank, Center for Michigan.
Allowing the 3.9 percent tax break would have added an important 10 percent individual tax cut to Snyder’s quiver, enabling him to make a true flat tax argument that both cuts rates and closes loopholes. A flat tax cut would enable the governor to counter the predictable howls of protest over the closing of Michigan’s most-generous-in-the-nation pension loophole. (Snyder’s counter argument is that at 4.25 percent Michigan still would have the second-lowest tax rate in the Midwest – behind only Indiana at 3.4 percent – but Granholm could have made the same argument)
When asked about this tactic by The Detroit News, Snyder appeared politically tone deaf. “I think it’s being financially prudent to stop it at 4.25 (percent). You can always go back and reevaluate that issue,” he said last month.
The time to reevaluate has come.
“I knew the honeymoon would end,” Snyder told a WJR-Michigan Chronicle-sponsored “Pancakes and Politics” breakfast gathering in Detroit this morning.
He urged voters to take a step back and look at how it affects the state as a whole and its long-term future. But the governor’s budget is under siege not just from the liberal establishment jealous of its pet special interest loopholes. He is under siege from his own party. A survey of state senators by The Detroit News this week shows the pension tax does not currently have enough votes to pass.
Where to find the money to offset the tax cut?
There is still lots of fat in overpaid union wages and special interest freebies – none of which can survive Snyder’s fairness smell test.
“The most unfortunate part of the budget is the proposal to raise taxes on pensions,” says Mackinac Center fiscal analyst Michael LaFaive who otherwise applauds Snyder’s budget. “While the tax fairness and simplicity arguments are not invalid, it’s still a very large tax hike, and one that’s totally unnecessary — (the) $5.7 billion in potential government employee fringe benefit savings would save several times the estimated $700 million in new revenue from this tax.”
A broad personal tax cut would also expose the soak-the-rich politics of Democrats who only want tax cuts for politically-favored special interests.
Wayne County Executive and union lackey Robert Ficano, for example, told Snyder he wants him to put big special interest tax loopholes back instead of asking prospective industries to appear before the legislature and seek an appropriation.
“Ficano said that process seems too unpredictable and cumbersome,” reports The Detroit News. Too predictable is right. Without the transparency of public approps hearings, Ficano can’t cut special favors for his corporate crnoies and union pals.
If the governor’s team lowers tax rates for everyone – individuals and business – while closing down on the special interests – unions and corporations – his transformative budget will win. And so will Michigan.
Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com
Nationalized! Welcome to millionaire Moore’s Torch Lake estate ( The Michigan View 03.03.11)
Posted by hpayne on March 4, 2011
Pack up the car everyone, we’re spending the summer at Michael Moore’s pad on Torch Lake.
In his latest rant against American capitalism, the multi-millionaire filmmaker (“Capitalism: A Love story”) told Laura Flanders of GritTV that the wealthy’s income should be nationalized.
“They’re sitting on the money, they’re using it for their own — they’re putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with our life, with that money. We’ve allowed them to take that. That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours. We all have this, we all benefit from this or we all suffer as a result of not having it,” Moore told Flanders.
But for all his class warfare rhetoric, millionaire Moore is one of “them.” The famed documentary director has amassed considerable wealth and property as a result of the success of his films from “Roger & Me” to “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
That wealth includes a swanky 200 Park Avenue penthouse in New York City and a massive beachfront complex at 222 SE Torch Lake Drive on the bottomless, azure waters of Torch Lake just north of Traverse City.
In fact, Torch Lake sources say that Moore has recently done major work on the Torch Lake complex, doubling its size and increasing its value to perhaps $5 million. Some of that wealth has been amassed at the expense of Michigan taxpayers as Moore’s 2009 “Capitalism” documentary received subsidies from the Michigan Treasury under the state’s generous 42-cents-on-the-dollar film tax break.
The Mackinac Center’s Kathy Hoekstra reports that Moore had claimed opposition to such corporate welfare. “These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios,” Moore once told a Traverse City audience. “Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we’re already broke here? I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they’re making billions already in profits. What’s the thinking behind that?”
So Moore’s a hypocrite for taking subsidies. So now that he advocates the collectivization of millionaires’ property such as his own, all Michiganders can enjoy the fruits of their investment in his film. And the next time you’re in New York, crash at his Park Avenue address. If that suite is occupied, then Moore also has a place on West 83rd Street. Help yourself.
“So let’s get his 7,000 square foot house on Torch Lake. Let’s get his penthouse in New York City,” says Michigan’s #1 talk show host Frank Beckmann.
After all, as Moore would say – “that’s a national resource, that’s ours.”