Not What A Rainy Day Fund Is For

Michigan Democrats are indeed profligate spenders.

The state's budget and spending has increased by 50% just under Governor Whitmer's term to date alone.

But that's still not enough spending for Michigan's Democrats.

Instead they want to increase it, and to do so have to tap into the state's emergency fund to do so.

The Detroit News: Michigan Senate dips into rainy day fund for $88B budget plan.

Everyday budgeting is not what a rainy day fund is for, but the Democrats see a pool of money and want to spend it now rather than wait for an actual revenue shortfall where the funds would be needed. 

That means under this budget state government spending is around $8,800 for  each and every resident of Michigan. If asked I don't believe most residents of Michigan would say they're getting their money's worth under this plan - especially those actually paying the taxes to cover it.

The 19 Democrats in the Senate voted for this increase, and 18 Republicans were opposed, so yet again the headline is a tad misleading.  It wasn't the Senate, but the Democrats in the Senate pushing this through.

The House has not approved this yet, so there's still hope that some responsible budgeting may yet prevail.

Where All The Students Are Above Average

In the continued inflation of American education, it is now admitted that students are getting higher grades on their college entrance classes for less effort and knowledge.

Education Next: The Dumbing Down of Advanced Placement Tests

The College Board, the agency in charge of the AP program, admits its questions are easier and passing scores have been lowered on key tests like the English Language exam. They justify the easier tests as an adjustment to a less demanding curriculum in high school and lowered expectations by colleges and universities. In other words, AP is simply adapting to a broad decline in educational standards.

Or to simplify: Grade inflation comes to the AP college admission tests.

Meanwhile, education costs continue to outpace inflation with lesser results.

While prevailing wisdom is that throwing more money at a problem leads to better results, Mississippi now leads in reading scores with funding per pupil far below states with far higher per pupil spending. That is, of course, because the money spent per pupil wasn't actually reaching the pupils.

The increase in Mississippi were due not to more dollars thrown at the problem but to reforms that focused on real results.

It is more than past time to stop inflating grades and dumbing-down tests and instead focus on actual reforms in our public schools.  How about we stop just throwing money at administrators, bureaucrats, and teacher's unions and getting the same results and instead focus on reforms that work?

Maybe, as a modest suggestion, how about less DEI for kids and more learn to read for starters?

More On California's High-Speed Train Corruption

Not only is the corruption and over-spending in the California high speed rail project bad enough that it is at 135 Billion dollars in spending with no tangible results -- from a budget that was supposed to be 10 billion dollars total for the project when it was announced in 2009 with no end in sight.

It's now bad enough that the Democrats in California are pushing a law to make the  news of how corrupt the high-speed rail project has been, and continues to be, a secret from Californians.

Daniel Greenfield:  California Politicians Propose Law Hiding Corruption from the Public

 You could say the California Democrats are running a train on the residents of California, and you wouldn't be wrong.

Oh, and if you're not reading Daniel Greenfield on a regular basis, you are missing out.

Two Months In, And He's Already Running Out Of Other People's Money

 Mamdani's grandiose plan of spending an additional 11 billion dollars to New York City's already grossly inflated budget is running into a brush with reality.

He can't fund it without raising taxes, and he'd prefer that other people do the tax raisin' and get other people's money to pay for it.

New York Post: Zohran Mamdani unveils record $127B budget — fueled by proposed NYC property tax hike

So, in searching for other people's money to fund this insane spending spree, he demanded that the New York governor increase everyone's taxes to pay it, which is going as well as can be expected:  IJR: Tax War Erupts Between Mamdani And Hochul.

With this budget, NYC will spend $127 Billion for the government of a single city.

The government for the entire State of Michigan by contrast, has a Budget of $88.1 Billion, even after the budget has been bloated over 50% by Governor Whitmer's increases over the course of her governorship.

Of course, the proposed speeding is chock-full of DEI and make-work jobs for his supporters, while defunding the police, even as the budget grows by 11 Billion.  Fox News: Mamdani plan pours millions into ‘racial equity’ offices and six-figure diversity jobs, cuts 5,000 NYPD jobs

New Yorkers are about to get what they wanted, good and hard. 

How Much Fraud Is In The US Economy?

Mr. B. looked with some dread at the question: How much of the US economy is fake?

If you consider US state and federal government going to waste and fraud, the answer is a heckuva lot. 

US Government Accountability Office puts annual fraud in US government programs at 233 Billion to 521 billion per year.

Elon Musk had an estimate of annual fraud in US federal government spending at 1.5 trillion – equivalent to slightly over half of all the 2.5 trillion dollars in taxes collected from American individual taxpayers per year.

In other words, if we got rid of the fraud at the federal level, we could pay half the federal income taxes we pay now with the exact same results.

This isn't even touching wasteful government spending at the Federal and State level.

At the State level, there's quite a lot going on as we saw in Minnesota and California which ranges into the billions of dollars.

We've got some of that here in Michigan, such as the billion dollars  spent on increasing student reading scores, only to have the effect be minimal and barely measurable:

 

The Detroit News: Michigan falls short of reading goal despite $1 billion in spending

 

Any bets that some of that spending went straight to waste and fraud at the Michigan variation of Learing centers? 

 

Nor does it cover the golden parachutes politicians prepared for their cronies in Dearborn Heights, to the tune of millions of taxpayer money spent 

 

The Detroit News: Former Dearborn Heights mayor inked severance contracts worth over $1M, records show 

 

Nor even the $20 million that went from Gov Whitmer's MEDC diect to embezzler Fey Beydoun.  Small potatoes in the world of government spending fraud, but $20 million is $20 million, after all.

 

Nor does this cover the nominally non-fraudulent but inefficient government spending such as on internet broadband connectivity and EV chargers and California high-speed rail to nowhere (which may indeed have fraudulent spending as a part of it).

 

Nor does it count the wasteful spending of billions of dollars by businesses at government directive or urging such as the spending on trying to wholesale replace internal combustion vehicles with electric ones. 

 

Fraud and wasteful spending combined at the federal and state levels easily exceeds a couple trillion dollars each year and every year. 

 

Perhaps it is time that stops? 

It's Good To Be The Mayor Of Dearbonistan

Interesting article on the upcoming mayoral election in Deaborn.

The Detroit Free Press: Dearborn candidate running for mayor vows to battle crime and blight, cut mayoral salary

One bit of info in the article stood out: 

. . .and cut by 25% Mayor Abdullah Hammoud's salary, which was higher than Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's salary last year.  

Yep, the mayor of Pro-Hamas and Hezbollah, Muslim-majority Dearborn, a city with a population of 103,000 people, gets a salary higher than that of the Governor of the entire state. Funny, that.

In 2024 he was paid $172,038 - more than 171% higher than the average pay for a mayor.  By contrast, Whitmer was paid $159,300.

Then again, Gov. Whitmer has under-performed rather markedly for this state, and Abdullah Hammoud has performed most admirably for Hamas and Hezbollah.

After all, if Hamas' leaders can feather their nests and become billionaires, why can't the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn make some big bucks? 

Going Fast And Breaking Things Has Consequences

While Trump is right to be proceeding with reforms, in doing so he and his administration are going a tad too fast. This is causing a lot of own-goals and public embarrassments, not to mention unnecessary disruption and collateral damage, which serves to reduce the enthusiasm and support for the reforms.

For example it has caused some major and completely unnecessary turmoil at the National Institute of Health :  The Transmitter: U.S. health agency purge includes 10 lab heads at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

This firing included one of the world's top researches on Parkinson's disease.

This firing led a lot of people to calmly ask:  "WTF?".

Well, turns out the firing was apparently a mistake caused by a "coding error" that mislabeled employees -- once people started making noise about it they were rehired.

The Transmitter: Coding error caused layoffs at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke this week, source says  

Thirty employees—including 11 lab heads—at the institute should “immediately return to work,” according to an email the institute’s Office of Human Resources sent to top administration at the institute Wednesday evening.

Reform is a good thing,  doing it stupidly and making the reformers look incompetent in doing so is not helpful to actual reform of the many, many, real problems in government agencies.

The blanket reductions and stoppages in research funding is having a major effect on good solid research in addition to the wasteful stuff that should be defunded.

"Hasten Slowly" is good advice.

Chesterton's Fence, while usually applied to progressives tearing down institutions, also applies to the Right when they tear down stuff without understanding the direct and indirect effects and implications of what they are doing.

Getting rid of fraud and waste and ridiculous programs that are little more than grants to progressive organizations along with associated graft  is a good thing, burning down the entire research "village" in order to do so is quite another.

Do it smartly, and quickly if need be, but make sure above all that you do it competently and show positive results. 

I Did Not Know That Michigan's Libraries Are

Heavily, and in some case majorly, funded by traffic tickets and penal fines. 

I had figured that library mileages on property taxes were responsible for the bulk of the funding. Apparently not.

Nor did I know, but I should have guessed, that Wayne County would manage to screw up the accounting and distribution for that funding. Badly.

The Detroit Free Press: Accounting errors have cost Wayne County libraries millions

Over the last decade, 18 libraries in Wayne County have been shorted as much as $1.9 million, while 11 saw an influx in cash, all because of staff turnover at the county level and subsequent accounting errors.

The money at issue flows through the state and comes from penal fines, which are paid to courts in criminal and some civil violations, including most traffic fines. County treasurers collect and distribute the fines to libraries. This funding is baked into state law and it can account for anywhere between 3% to 70% of public libraries' annual budgets, according to the Library of Michigan.

 Wayne County lost the employee who calculated penal fines and the county did not replace that position, according to a report the Library of Michigan prepared for public library directors and boards.

So interesting to know that a goodly amount of the fines from court goes to the state's libraries, hopefully helping the True Crime shelves be well stocked, and that Wayne County can impressively mess up the distribution of those funds.

Corruption And The Problem Of Scale

DOGE is finding an impressive amount of government corruption, fraud, and featherbedding networks in US Treasury payments.  Verily they are uncovering the Democrat-Progressive-NGO complex with their probe into USAID and Treasury spending.

In a single area of government spending, DOGE learned that $100 Billion (with a B) in entitlement payments were going out to people with no social security number or other identifiers attached to the payments. Treasury officials apparently stated that $50 Billion of that was outright fraud.  Yet the payments were made year after year. It is likely even more programs will show outright fraudulent transfers.

Now $50 Billion in fraud in a single program could be dismissed as just a rounding error in the US Treasury's annual spending of over 6 Trillion dollars. 

And therein lies the problem.  When $50 Billion in fraudulent spending in entitlement programs is just considered a rounding error, you've lost the plot.

 $50 billion is the equivalent of a an entire lifetime of income tax payments by 153,581 Americans. Every dollar in income taxes paid for their entire lives, wasted on fraud in a single program - in one year - every year.

This $50 Billion in spending isn't just a political disagreement over priorities or funding Democrat's friends and buddies in NGOs or throwing money at SPPL (Stuff Progressive People Like). It is an outright transfer of payments to fraudulent recipients.

One should note that $50 Billion is higher than the entire GDP in 112 countries!  

If the fraudulent payments were a country's GDP, the Country of Entitlement Fraudlandia with a GDP of $50 Billion has a GDP equivalent to 14 Haitis, and handily would beat out Bangladesh, Romania, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Morrocco in world rankings at 51st in the world.

The $50 Billion received by Entitlement Fraudlandia is far more than the amount of aid sent so far to North Carolina after Hurricane Helena, which is, depending on what source you look at as a clear answer is interestingly hard to find, anywhere from 3 billion to up to 9 billion total in the latest round of aid.

Even worse, a General Accounting Office report from late April estimated outright fraudulent spending by the Federal Government to be  233 Billion to $521 Billion each year.

That would make The Nation of US Spending Fraudlandia have a greater GDP than India and it would be a Country with the 11th highest GDP in the entire World.

Again, that's just from outright fraud, not even touching cutting what are arguably legitimate, while still being  rather objectionable, payments that are being made on rather questionable spending priorities and to reinforce the Democrat-Progressive NGO complex.

A Truly Tremendous Use of Your Federal Taxpayer Dollars

Yes,  Visit Detroit, via a grant from the Michigan Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus, which itself got the money from Covid relief dollars, is spending a million plus to sponsor a football team to wear "Visit Detroit"  on their jerseys.

The team? Burnley FC in Burnely, England, United Kingdom.

This idea likely came up after the Visit Detroit execs were wondering how to spend their Covid funds they received before the grant ran out, and they had just watched a few episodes of Ted Lasso.

The Detroit Free Press:  Why Visit Detroit became prominent sponsor for English soccer team Burnley FC

Burnley you ask?  it's a thriving metropolis of 73,000 in Lancashire, England. Currently the team is not in the top league having been relegated. Clearly Burnley is a potential source for throngs of English visitors to come visit Detroit.  Maybe visitors will fly Emirates to get here. Nothing against Burnley mind you, it seems like a nice enough place, but for Detroit to burn through Covid funds to sponsor its football team is kinda bonkers.

The Clarets don't have quite the name recognition of say Manchester City or Arsenal, or such, being currently ranked 23rd, but when you've got a million plus you need to burn quickly, needs must and all that, wot?

Sounds like an absolutely great use of over a million dollars in Covid (federal taxpayer or debt sourced) funds.

Democrat Math - Spend Over $100 Million to save $50 Million

Our Democrat County Executive is touting his cunning plan to save $50 million in rehab expenses of existing county government buildings by buying some buildings in Pontiac, rehabbing them, doing some demolition, and moving County government officials there.

 The Detroit Free Press: Oakland County has ignored downtown Pontiac for too long. We're reinvesting in it.

Of course, it's going to end up costing a lot more than the claimed $100 Million. Count on it.

The more you dig into it, the more it appears to not just be an attempt to help out the City of Pontiac.  Sure, by moving government employees there and paying for locating them it will boost real estate prices and  increase occupancy in a blighted downtown.  It will also boost the Pontiac's coffers as the city has an income tax and those employees will have to pay it.  

But, it also looks like this is a way also to bail the city out its longstanding trouble with the Ottawa Towers/Phoenix Center area. Now the County will be responsible for tearing down the Phoenix Center rather than Pontiac, and all the cost of rehabbing buildings in the name of "reinvesting".

One interesting part of this deal is the Towers are being purchased by the County for $19.2 million from Tarik Dinha.

Mr. Dinha apparently purchased those towers back in March 2021 for $7.1 million from the city.

That's one heckuva nice return on his investment for him for holding them for a couple years, courtesy of not just County taxpayers, but State and Federal taxpayers through use of Covid funds as well. 

It is indeed a great bailout of the City Dems by the County Dems.

This deal also bails out the City from a $6 million dollar judgment - funny Coulter doesn't mention that.

Now instead of having all of County government in one complex, where the parking is very easy, you can find everything you need in one spot, it's going to be split with some of the operations moved to downtown Pontiac.

In short, this deal is a case of the County Democrats bailing out the City Democrats -- and using your money to do it and making it less convenient for the taxpayer to access county services conveniently, while claiming they are doing it for a more noble and glorious purpose.

Michigan Dems' Plan To Bail Out Broke Dem City Proceeds Apace

You never have to say you're sorry, so long as there's still other people's money available.

The Detroit News: Highland Park, GLWA strike deal trying to buy time for final settlement

The tentative deal comes as state lawmakers have attempted to provide bailout money. The Senate Appropriations Committee last month approved a $35.4 billion budget for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services that includes $20.3 million for Highland Park to use to repay the estimated $24 million with interest it owes the Great Lakes Water Authority for years of unpaid drinking water bills.

You see, the City of Highland Park doesn't just owe $24 million in unpaid water bills, they owe tens of millions more in unpaid water bills.  Their current annual property tax revenue - $9.6 million. That's a problem. But now thanks to the Michigan Democrats, it won't be the city's problem and there will be no consequences to it and it's leadeship for this rather bad decision.

After all, there's tax money available from the rest of the state's taxpayers to be diverted.

The fun question is what was the city government of Highland Park doing with all the water payments made by residents there to the City all that time when they weren't paying it to GLWA?

A more pressing question is why should everyone else in the state be bailing them out for their deliberate decision and failure to pay for their water bills?

Electric School Bus 2: Electric Boogalo and A Little Democrat Corruption Too

Turns out Electric Buses aren't as reliable nor as cost-effective as they are cracked up to be, shocking, I know.

Washington Free Beacon: Biden Spent $1 Billion To Get Schools Electric Buses. This Michigan District Says Theirs Hardly Work. 

During an April 19 presentation to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, the district's environmental sustainability director, Emile Lauzzana, highlighted a number of issues with the district's electric bus fleet. Those buses, Lauzzana said, have "a lot of downtime and performance issues" and aren't "fully on the road," despite the fact that they are "approximately five times more expensive than regular buses." The infrastructure upgrades required to use the buses, meanwhile, were "originally estimated to be only about $50,000" but "ended up being more like $200,000," according to Lauzzana. "I have a number of colleagues in different states who are facing similar challenges," the district official lamented. "For the school bus market, it's been challenging for us."

Note that this is in solid-Blue Ann Arbor.  When even the enviro-nut, quasi-commies of Ann Arbor are complaining about these electric green busses, you know it's bad.

But, no worries, Democrats still made bank on the deal, and that, after all is what matters along with the "green" virtue signalling at the public' expense:

The Biden administration has faced intense criticism from congressional Republicans over its ties to electric bus maker Proterra. Administration officials repeatedly showcased the company while Biden's energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, held up to $5 million in Proterra stock. Granholm eventually sold her 240,000 Proterra shares in May 2021, with the former Michigan governor earning a cool $1.6 million.

Nice bit of insider trading if you can get it, neh?

Michigan Moronrail: Let's Talk About Choo-Choos for $100 Million Dollars

High-speed rail is a Democrat fever-dream they just can't give up on.  They problem is their only answer for their fever is instead of more cowbell is more of your tax dollars.

MLive.com: High-speed rail a $100m conversation starter in early Michigan budget 

The state Senate’s initial budget proposal for the Michigan Department of Transportation, which a committee on Tuesday passed to the full legislature for negotiations, includes $100 million “to encourage high-speed rail development.”

The catch, however, is that this number, which represents more than 14% of MDOT’s proposed budget increase, is “just trying to start the conversation,” says the lawmaker who took point on crafting the Senate’s transportation proposal for fiscal year 2023-24.

$100 Million to "spark a  conversation" about high-speed rail,  Not build it mind you, but to talk about and study it.

Given the stupidly high cost of Michigan's road repairs, that $100 million is about 100 miles of roads that could have been fixed for this money earmarked to study and "spark a conversation" about trains. Still, 100 miles of rebuilt roads is nothing to sneeze at and far more worthy than sending the money to discuss  high speed rail.

 Of course they want it to move leftists to places they like:

One proposal MARP has given lawmakers would expand passenger rail service into and out of Detroit, and another would create a route that goes from Ann Arbor to Traverse City and Petoskey.

Yep a subsidized a high-speed route for well-off leftists to travel between Ann Arbor and their cottages in Petoskey/Traverse City.  Maybe we can  name it the SWPL Rail Line - assuming it ever gets built for less than a few billion. 

I'd instead propose talking to them to about the cautionary tale of California's cost overrun budget-busting experience with building or in reality not building High Speed rail . I might also explain how California has a larger population to support such a project and they can't even make it work - except for the lovely amount of graft and pay that has been making its way to Democrat constituencies in the process. 

I'd even have an in depth "conversation" for a heckuva lot less than $100 Million dollars.

Oh Joy, Michigan Now Has A Poet Laureate

Yep, as expected the choice was indeed politically correct.

The Detroit Free Press:  Meet Nandi Comer, Michigan's first poet laureate since the 1950s

She's the second poet laureate the state has had, after an absence of even having one for over 70 years, indicating the clear and desperate need for poet laureates in this state.

I know you're asking, Nandi who?  

So has everyone else.  

She's hardly a household name, and seems to be mainly known among the lefty Detroit artsy set. As is to be expected, she's African American and leftist, and has all of two poetry books on Amazon. Clearly the best possible candidate to represent this state as a poet laureate.

She is indeed skilled at lefty word salads that defy explanation:

Quality cant, that.

And, of course, race and blackness are key, and her work includes a charming poem to Dear Trayvon (Martin) and Michael (Brown) and the poem of course runs with the false hands up myth in the case of Michael Brown, and they both dindu nuffin, of course.

I daresay, we really didn't need a poet laureate, nor the expense of one, and even if one was needed, one would have hoped they would represent Michigan as a whole.

Does Michigan Really Need A State Poet?

With everything else facing this state, do we need to spend $67,000 for a post of State Poet Laureate, when the post has not even been filled?

Apparently the state has already budgeted or spent that amount for the position (hard to tell as the article is behind a paywall), and this is of course an excellent example of wise government spending. Not.

Of course, the choice of poet laureate, once the choise is made, if ever,  will be political.  Given our current governor, who is in charge of appointing such a useless position,  most likely it will be some woke poet that checks required diversity boxes that no typical Michigander has even heard much less read.

Of course, state poet laureates have a tradition of such worthlessness on the public dime. Indded, many seem paid to denigrate those who appointed them.

New Jersey appointed Amir Baraka as poet laureate and that worked out just great.  Not only did he bless the state with his misogynistic, anti-American, and Anti-Semitic poetry, but he was a 9/11 Truther with a capital "T" as well. That state sure got it's money's worth.

Expect a similar outcome if Michigan wastes the money to appoint our own poet laureate.

It's a pity we can't instead, if we have to spend money on figureheads, use the money to appoint Mike Rowe as the State's Skilled Tradesman Laureate. 

Given the need for skilled trades in this state, appointing him as such and having him go around promoting it would be better for Michigan than some poet laureate with a chip on their shoulder that no one has even heard of at all. 

Michigan doesn't seem to have a detectable poetry deficit at the moment, but we could sure use more skilled tradesman and tradeswomen.

The State Of Michigan Spending Spree

In an effort to drain the surplus to prevent the automatic state income tax cut, and to spend money faster than a drunken sailor ( and a drunken sailor is spending the sailor's money not other people's) the Michigan Democrats and Whitmer have unveiled a massive spending plan.

The Detroit News:  Gov. Whitmer $79B budget plan seeks record school funding, tax relief

Except of course its not universal tax relief, but targeted to her base, with a sop of a $180 check to tax filers but not all taxpayers. 

How much spending are we talking about? The spending would leave all of $250 million remaining out of the current $9 billion surplus.

Talk about a spree. One might even say it's a ridiculously irresponsible lack of stewardship of this state's coffers, especially as inflation continues and they chatter about an upcoming recession, and recessions tend to hit Michigan hard.

Funnily enough, her previous urgency to "fix the damn roads" seems rather completely forgotten in her current quest to spend the 9 Billion surplus.  

Nothing is announced with fanfare as to extra spending on road fixes from this spree.

Instead, she's hitting all the favored Democrat areas - increasing school funding as well as making a $700 million deposit to the teacher's retirement fund, increasing the earned income tax credit and preventing public pensions from being subject to income tax (but not 401K and most if not all private pensions) - picking winners and losers indeed.

We will note the increased school funding is to fix some of the education and learning lost due to Governor Whitmer's policies of closing the schools during the pandemic: 

The budget would include another $300 million for a tutoring program designed to help students who fell behind in school during the pandemic.

Gov Whitmer et a.,l  do indeed admit exactly why they're spending all this money and tryign to make the surplus evaporate - including those $180 checks:

The proposal includes the establishment of a new "Michigan Taxpayer Rebate Fund" to receive $800 million in Corporate Income Tax revenue for the purpose of providing $180 rebate payments to income tax filers. Married couples would get $180 combined.

The rebates would prevent an expected cut in the 4.25% personal income tax by dropping state revenues below a threshold that would trigger an automatic rate cut.

So, no tax relief for everyone, only for some, and for one time not moving forward. 

Not nearly the opportunity for graft and paying off constituencies for their support if you give everyone tax relief rather than focus on rewarding your contributors and voting blocs.

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.

Detroit Schools: Throwing More Money At A Problem Does Not Solve The Problem

Detroit Schools got the greatest amount of Covid aid of any school system in Michigan.  Not only that it got the greatest amount of Federal Covid aid of any large school system in the United States - more than $25,000 per student.

Detroit also gets as of 2018-2019 data (good luck finding more recent info) at least  $15,891 per student in funding.

The result: The Detroit News: Dumas: Half of Detroiters illiterate? We need action

Detroit is the eighth highest spending school district per pupil in the entire United States, and it still has the worst outcomes.

Expect the action demanded to be to throw even more money at the problem, even as throwing tons of money at the Detroit Public Schools for decades now has not increased the school system's performance.. 

Because the doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.  But, it is a very profitable insanity for the teacher's union, the school administrators, and the Democrat party that gets donations and activists in return for the funding.

Gov. Whitmer's Proposed Vote Buying Spree

The State of Michigan is currently flush with cash - both from state tax revenue being up and lots of that sweet, sweet Biden money. So, since an election is coming up, it's time for her to buy votes with taxpayer money.

The Detroit News:  Whitmer urges $500 rebate; House, Senate push $2.6B in tax relief

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asked legislative leaders to consider sending $500 rebates to residents. . . . Revenue estimates for the current and coming fiscal years are expected to come in $4 billion to $5 billion higher than the state predicted in its last January estimate — a surplus not accounted for in current budget plans.

If you read the article, the Demas are proposing to target these $500 checks not to every resident but to lower income ones only as "inflation releif paymentrs" - so the plan is for relief provided by tax-payer money and debt from a Democrat Governor for the inflation caused by a Democrat President's policies. Not to mention giving out another $500 to be spent is itself inflationary. Awesome plan.

Quick question governor- Whatever just happened to the Governor's urgent need for money to "fix the damn roads" then? 

She was all for a tax increase to do that, but now that a tax increase isn't needed as the budget is fat on federal money, she wants to not channel it to "fix the damn roads" but instead hand it out to buy votes.  Of course, shes against a broad-based relief like a state income tax cut to provide relief to those who are paying into the system whose money made the surplus occur in the first place.

November can't come soon enough.