Won’t someone think of the millionaires? Not that it’s a surprise but Republicans in the Senate blocked passage of the Buffett Rule today that would have ensured that the most-wealthy Americans would pay their fair share in taxes. It wouldn’t have raised that much money but it’s a good first step. President Obama was much nicer about it than I […]

Hello? Anybody out there? I really have to ask the question, “Where is the mainstream media on the challenge to Public Act 4 repeal petitions?” This is not just a wonky, technical discussion. This is an attempt to silence the voices of nearly a quarter million Michiganders on a concocted technicality. (If you’ve missed my previous posts on this, you […]

I hate when that happens

Mitt Romney is traveling around the country telling Americans what a complete disaster Obamacare is, the health insurance reform modeled after his own Romneycare back in Massachusetts. He calls it “an unfolding disaster for the American economy, a budget-busting entitlement, and a dramatic new federal intrusion into our lives.”

Meanwhile, back Massachusetts, health insurance rates in the program are actually dropping.

You fontin’ me, bro?

Yesterday, I took a look at the font size on the petitions to put the repeal of Public Act 4 — Michigan’s Emergency Manager law — on the November ballot. Recall that the group Citizens for Financial Responsibility is challenging the more than quarter million citizen signatures on a minor font-based technicality. As I said yesterday, it’s a desperate move and one that’s not even based on anything legitimate.

The rules (which you can read HERE [pdf]) don’t actually tell you what type of font is required. If you wanted to, you could use Comic Sans or anything else that is readable. However, the font choice makes a BIG difference in the height and width of font.

[More analysis with example fonts after the jump.]

Clear as mud

I was cleaning up my office today and came across a couple Public Act 4 repeal petitions. I thought it would be interesting to see how wrong the fonts are. Recall that Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility wants to toss out nearly a quarter million petition signatures because they say the heading font is smaller than the required 14-point boldface font (state regulation HERE (pdf).) They aren’t saying that the petition language itself is too small, just the heading.

Follow me over the jump for photos and comparisons and all sorts of fonty goodness.

Not all conflicts of interest are created equal

The continuing saga of the desperate attempt to derail putting the repeal of Public Act 4 — Michigan’s Emergency Manager law — on the November ballot continues with a piece published on the Michigan Radio website titled “Ballot box politics: Conflicts of interest for Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers”.

As I wrote about earlier this week, one of the members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers (BSC), the group that will decide on the challenge to the petitions collected by Stand up for Democracy, is Jeff Timmer. Timmer works for a company that is intimately tied to the effort to defeat the repeal. His company, Sterling Corporation, is one and the same as the group “Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility” that is challenging the 226,000+ signatures because they font size of the heading is 12 rather than 14. Note that the printer’s affidavit certifies that the font is the correct size.

Like I said: desperate…

[More after the jump]

Now we KNOW who will be Michigan’s Senator after November 2012

Pete Hoekstra, he of the catastrophic “Yellow Girl” anti-China campaign ad that all but destroyed any chance he had of competing against Senator Debbie Stabenow in November, has now sealed his fate. How? By pretty much guaranteeing that he won’t get any women to vote for him.

During a campaign stop yesterday, he was asked about the Lilly Ledbetter Act, the law that allows women to sue companies if they pay men more than women for the same job. Hoekstra responded that it shouldn’t be the law.

I’m not kidding…

Why would ANYONE want to be a teacher in Michigan??? Last month, I wrote about the latest attack on teachers in Michigan, an effort to strip benefits and cut into their pensions. Facing an unfunded liability of over $45 billion, Michigan Republicans are set to take it out of the hides of teachers with Senate Bill 1040. The bill will […]

How the financial class broke America. I like to say that Mitt Romney made his millions betting against American workers. It isn’t the greatest Romney-attack line ever. (That belongs to Ted Kennedy who said, “He isn’t pro-choice or anti-choice. He’s multiple choice.”) But it makes a point you can’t hear enough. Romney had a record of devaluing American workers and […]

A tale of an Obama surrogate who isn’t This is the Week of the Woman™ for the Romney campaign and Mitt is going whole hog trying to prove that it is he, not President Obama, who is the pro-woman candidate (maybe I should pause while you stop laughing.) His chief advisor in this effort is, apparently, his wife Ann, pictured […]

How Mitt Romney sold out his greatest achievement in search of a talking point I’ve often said that Mitt Romney running against ObamaCare is like Madonna running against Lady GagaCare. ObamaCare is a tribute to what worked in RomneyCare made national.  It is already helping save many of the 45,000 Americans who die every year for lack of insurance. Yep. […]