In A Desperate Move To Avoid A Tax Cut Whitmer Resorts To Outright Bribery

Our Dear  Governor Whitmer is stating she will send a check for $180 to each taxpayer - thereby reducing the budget surplus in order to avoid the automatic tax cut to be applied to ALL taxpayers of Michigan should the biudget surplus remain as it is.

Except she actually isn't even going to send a $180 check to each Michigan taxpayer.

The Detroit Free Press: Gov. Whitmer proposal: A $180 check for each Michigan taxpayer

She's claiming she will do it, but the details of this part of her plan deliberately  shafts quite a few Michigan working taxpayers - namely married ones:

One check would be issued for each income tax filing in 2023, so a couple filing jointly would receive one $180 check, not two, a spokesman said.  

So sorry married workers, if both of you work and pay taxes, one of you doesn't count. Thus Gov half-Whit can't even tell more than a half-truth about her plan to dole out your tax money.

But wait, no need to worry there government-jilted spouse, your $180 will go to someone else, someone who doesn't even pay income taxes!

Also, those eligible to file income tax returns but who do not owe any taxes to the state would still be eligible for a check, a spokesman said.

Read that again, if you're married and you both pay taxes, only one of you will get the credit, but if you're single and you don't owe any income taxes, you can get $180 just by filing.  

Why Democrats like to penalize marriage so much is a mystery, isn't it?

Why they like to give money away to their stalwart supporters is not.

Meanwhile her proposal also moves to exempt public pensions from being subject to income tax, to further reward her support base of public employees versus others with 401Ks, and some private pensions.

Picking winners and losers indeed, rewarding her base, and stopping universal tax relief for all Michigan taxpayers - that's her plan.

The Case Of The Missing Gangsta Rappers

The Detroit News:  3 aspiring rappers headed to a Detroit club. They haven't been seen since'

Apparently turning your life around after prison while remaining in the rap scene can be dangerous to your health.   

All three men heading to do some rappin' disappeared somewhere in Detroit and haven't been seen since.  The car was found in the possession of a juvenile who had stolen it apparently after they had already gone missing.

The Detroit News story notes that all three met each other in prison, which they were in for such trivial and commonplace felonies as armed robbery, carjacking, drug dealing, and gang related crimes, and they decided to go do rap together.

Its certainly rare for three adults to completely up and disappear, even in Detroit.

Update: The case has unfortunately ended as most would expect it would end: 

The Detroit News: Bodies of missing two rappers, friend found under debris in vacant Highland Park apartment building

Michigan Democrats: You Know Those Covid Rules? We Break Them When We Want To

Nothing like situational ethics, and situational quarantines, or lack thereof.

After testing positive for Covid, a Michigan Democrat Representative decided to attend a legislative session the very next day and vote rather than staying home for 5 days under the CDC guidelines.

That's because while the rules and guidelines for isolation if you test positive with Covid may be important, voting for the Democrat's tax and spend agenda is importanter.

The Detroit News: Democratic lawmaker shows up to vote at Capitol a day after positive COVID test

 Laws and health regs are indeed for the little people.

Governor Half-Whit Loves Taxes So Much

So much so, that she and the state Democrats are now busy scheming to try and prevent the state income tax cut mandated by law due to excessive taxes being collected.

The Detroit News: Looming automatic tax cut has Michigan Democrats studying options

A proposal to redirect income tax revenues to avoid the potential income tax cut has been floated by Democrats privately in Lansing, in recent days, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak on them publicly. The possibility comes as state lawmakers look for ways to fund a program aimed at attracting large job-creating projects and as they prepare bills to provide targeted tax relief by decreasing taxes on retirement income and boosting a credit for low-wage workers.

Meanwhile, higher-than-expected tax revenue could trigger a cut in Michigan's personal income rate from 4.25% to 4.05%, or somewhere within that range, under a 2015 law, according to the nonpartisan House and Senate fiscal agencies.

Yep, they're trying to do some accounting gimmicks and stuff a crony slush fund to try and prevent the tax cut for all. 

Simply pathetic.

Pathetic yet understandable. 

After all, it's hard to grift and trade favors when the tax cut applies equally to all, rather than just going to favored Democrat voting groups.

If You Hire Unqualified Officers In The Name Of Diversity, Don't Be Suprised With The Result That Is Diverse From The Acceptable

In the killing of Tyre Nicols by 5 Black Officers of the Memphis Police Department, it's beginning to look like a progressive wish for diversity over all the things led to unqualified (but diverse!) officers being on the street.

Daily Headlines Live: Police Charged with Murder of Tyre Nichols: Cops are Hired after Job Requirements Are Lowered

“According to a source within the Memphis PD, the 5 charged officers weren’t hired through the usual structured PD hiring process,” Parmar claimed. “City leaders felt the existing process was too strict and kept certain people from getting jobs at the department. City leaders began their own hiring process and then pushed new hires into the agency, bypassing the testing procedures in place at the department. You can read between the lines what that all means.”

“All 5 of the charged officers were hired by the City, and didn’t go through the rigorous PD testing process,”Continued the statement “This is what quota hiring looks like. Lawsuits and dead innocents. The city should pay (sic) the lawsuits instead of the Police department. This Murder wasn’t created by old school policing or by ‘white supremacy’. This murder was directly facilitated by liberal policy.”

In short a quest for diversity, led to less than qualified applicants being hired including the city providing waivers for felons to join the force.

It will be interesting to see if these officer's personnel files ever come to light and to see if they actually did have the standard testing, including psychological testing, performed prior to their hire.

That statement as to lowered standards now has been confirmed as to at least two of the officers, and we may find out that the source was correct as to all 5 bypassing the normal hiring requirements: 

MSN: Memphis cops charged in Tyre Nichols murder hired after PD relaxed job requirements

WFIN: Tyre Nichols death: 2 Memphis officers involved in stop joined department after it lowered hiring standards

When you have low standards in the name of making sure "certain people" get hired, or your desire to just get bodies in uniform, you get low quality applicants working the streets and the potential for tragedy.  

Add the difficulty in getting qualified applicants after the Defund The Police Movement did its thing, couple it with an acceptance for lower standards and even felons wearing a badge, and it's sadly unsurprising that unqualified officers will act in unqualified and unacceptable ways.

This was a pretty clear case where the use of force to stop and secure someone resisting arrest went way, way, way beyond the acceptable level of force permissible to effect an arrest.

The result of progressive fantasies is perhaps the ultimate irony:

A local news report from 2021 praised efforts by the department to recruit more "people of color," due to their purported likelihood to "use force far less frequently than white male officers."

That praise sure didn't age well, as once again for the record, all five officers who beat Tyre Nichols were "people of color".

Sunday Range Trip

It turns out, there's quite an overlap between shooters and students of BJJ.

Met up with 4 friends from Jitsu at Huron Valley Guns this morning.

It had snowed overnight so the car slid down the Driveway of Doom™ and off I went.  Roads and highway ranged from very to somewhat slippery on the way there.

Sadly, their restaurant was not open for breakfast this morning as the cook apparently quit or didn't want to work this morning, or something.  Unfortunate, as the breakfasts are really good,  and extra nice with the free range time.

So, the five of us rented three lanes and got some shooting in.

Everyone got to try the PS90 and we all agreed it was fun as heck. That's 100 more trouble-free rounds through it.

It shoots dead-on at 25 yards, but it does shoot notably low at 7 and a bit less so at 10 yards. Still, it was as fun as anything to shoot and everyone liked shooting some rounds through it.

I shot my Sig 320 and did some holster draws.  I just upgraded to a PHLster Pro holster instead of the PHLster Floodlight and the change is rather pronounced.  The Pro is much smother both for holstering and re-holstering, and does "fit" me better, so I'm pretty happy with it. I suspect the Sig slide is just a little wider than the typical gun for the Floodlight and that makes a difference.  Probably shaved a tenth of a second off my draw or something.

Did some drills without the timer, and did some B8s at 25 which I hadn't done for awhile.  Let everyone try their guns I had brought along and I got to try a few as well which was fun.

After the hour of range time, we hung out and wandered around the store and chatted a bit and then headed off our separate ways.

It was a most excellent time among friends.

Then I got home, and again couldn't get the car up the Driveway of Doom™ so I left the car at the bottom, and got shoveling.  Once cleared, no problem, and a decent strength and cardio workout was thus accomplished.

So, Who's In Charge Here, Exactly?

Quite the interesting affair is going on that raises some major questions about both government oversight, and who is actually in charge of our government - government agencies or Congress?

ABC News: Senators on intel committee demand to see Biden and Trump docs, in rare bipartisan outrage

Yes, the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, is actually telling the House Intelligence Committee, the Committee that allegedly oversees the DNI and other government intel agencies, that the Committee cannot see what the classified documents are that Trump and Biden actually had in their possession.

In short, we have an executive agency under Congressional oversight refusing to be over-sighted.

Certainly makes one ask: Who is in charge here? 

It also makes one ask: What's in the docs (or in the case of the Trump docs, not in the docs - such as no nuclear secrets anyone?) that they don't want Congress to see?

Is the Biden administration directing thee DNI to make the denial and directly blocking Congress from doing its job as the documents would prove rather embarrassing both to the anti-Trump narrative and to Biden?  Or, is this a case of a government agency deciding that it can do whatever it wants without any proper oversight all on its own?

I mean, the only valid reason to not do so is a risk of a leak of the docs to a foreign power (assuming Biden and Hunter haven't already sent them on) and now that Eric Swallwell is off the Committee the risk of a direct pass-through to Chinese intelligence is much lessened, even with other Democrats still on the committee. 

How this gets resolved is going to be quite the  insight on how the Federal government is actually run today.