This is what happens when you elect people who hate the government to run the government Whether it’s the Tea Party Nation, TeaParty.org, the Tea Party Express, the Tea Party Patriots, or any number of the myriad local tea party groups across the country, their message is the same: We hate president Obama Shrink government and lower our taxes. “TEA”, […]

Middle-class Michigan families can watch their taxes increase $50 every second. And they have Gov. Rick Snyder and legislative Republicans to thank for it. For a party that says they want lower taxes, Republicans in Michigan sure like taxing the middle class. During the last legislative session, Governor Rick Snyder and the Republican-led legislature made severe changes to the Michigan […]

I see what you’re doing here. We all do. I think all of us are, like Amy described in her righteous rant yesterday, sick and tired of being held hostage by extremist right wing ideologues who behave like petulant children when they don’t get absolutely everything they want. What’s most infuriating about it is that these very same ideologues have […]

This must be the “great progress” Donald Trump was talking about… As I mentioned yesterday, Donald Trump was all “Heckuva job, Ricky” on Twitter a couple of days ago, complimenting Governor Snyder on Michigan’s “great progress”. I’m thinking he wasn’t aware that today the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget would be announcing that, for the third month in […]

Wait. What??? As I wrote about a month ago, Republican House Representative Bob Genetski has a solution to Michigan’s budget problems: blow an $8.3 billion hole in it by repealing the state income tax. Well, the bill has been introduced: House Bill 4898. Here is the part that eliminates the tax: HOUSE BILL No. 4898 July 18, 2013, Introduced by […]

Who elects these geniuses??? As Michigan struggles with crumbling infrastructure that we don’t have the money to fix, failing schools that we have stopped investing in, and cities in crisis from a collapsed manufacturing base, one Republican, Saugatuck state Representative Bob Genetski has a solution: eliminate the state income tax. No, kids, I’m not kidding. Michigan voters could decide whether […]

Uh, someone didn’t get the memo that the answer to everything is to cut corporate taxes

Flint Emergency Manager Ed Kurtz is leading a push to increase city income taxes by 0.5% for residents and 0.25% for non-residents. That’s a 50% increase. Why? Turns out Flint is out of money and needs revenue. It’s almost as if Flint’s problems weren’t caused by waste, fraud, and mismanagement after all.

More after the jump.

Make yourself heard

As I reported yesterday, the Michigan House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to eliminate the sales tax on aviation fuel. This bill is in addition to House Bill 4539 which if passed, will eliminate the sales tax on gasoline sales in our state. My piece said that this would take $770.1 million out of the School Aid Fund (SAF). However, that amount is only for the repeal of the gasoline tax. According to a statement by State Rep. Brandon Dillon, yesterday’s repeal of the aviation fuel tax will remove another $55 million . That means if both bills are passed, $825.1 million more will be taken from our kids’ schools. This represents over two-thirds of the $1.2 billion Governor Snyder has asked for for road repair.

Click through for more including details on how you can make your voice heard on this issue.

This is getting ridiculous

Michigan Republicans are getting ready to inflict further catastrophic damage on our state’s schools with the passage of a package of bills designed to pay for road and bridge repair, a major priority of Governor Rick Snyder. The bills say nothing about education or the School Aid Fund but the impact is there to the tune of more than $770.1 million.

Click through for all the gory details and information on how you can take action TODAY!

At least they’re not hiding it…

As the debate rages on where to get the millions of dollars in funding needed to repair Michigan’s crumbling roads and bridges, Americans for Prosperity have an answer: use cuts to education and state employee wages to pay for them.

Click through for details on the efforts of this corporate whore to get the poor and middle class to pay for public improvements that benefit corporations more than anyone else.

They are counting on us to be too stupid or distracted to care

If there is one thing that you could count on hearing in the stump speeches of Michigan Republicans during the 2010 midterm campaign it was that they were going to lower your taxes, by God. Smaller government funded by fewer taxes was their recipe for success.

Of course, they immediately got to work NOT lowering taxes and passed the Emergency Manager Law, started a campaign to destroy all unions that is well into its third year and have continued to attack women’s reproductive rights and freedoms with an anti-woman zeal not seen since the days of New England witch trials.

But today, April 15th — Tax Day — it’s worth taking a moment to pause and realize that not only did they not lower our taxes, for more than half of the people living, working and trying to get by in Michigan, they actually RAISED taxes.

Click through for much more.