Everybody loves a parade, and Livingston County Democrats are no exception.
Once again, party members will be marching in the annual 4th of July parade in Brighton. Come join us!
Marchers will gather at the BECC, the former Scranton school, at the corner of Main Street and Church Street, at 9 a.m. on the 4th. The parade steps off at 10 a.m. and will travel down Main Street to the parking lot at Brighton High School.
Wear something red, white, or blue, in honor of our nation’s birthday. We will be handing out candy to children along the parade route.
Friday, June 29, 2007
A reality check for Michigan's GOP
From the Citizens Research Council of Michigan , a refreshingly fact-filled look at our state's financial position:
Michigan’s Tax, Revenue and Spending Situation.
1. Michigan is a federal tax donor state. For every federal tax $1.00 sent to Washington, only $.85 is returned back to Michigan. Tax Foundation. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/347.html
2. Shrinking tax revenue has made it more difficult to balance the state budget. A shortfall of around $800 million exists this year, and the deficit in next year's budget could be $1 billion or more.In the previous four years, the state wrestled with more than $4 billion in shortfalls. Tax cuts passed beginning in 2000 -- including cuts in the Personal Income Tax and the Single Business Tax, which expires at the end of the year -- have chopped state revenue by $1.4 billion a year, according to state Treasurer Robert Kleine. Michigan is losing jobs, home prices are sinking, foreclosures are rising and the state has a huge budget deficit. This is not exactly a pretty picture. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/state-tax-revenues.html
3. Michigan has cut its budget 40% in the last 6 years, when adjusted for inflation. Michigan’s tax burden is below the national average. Michigan state government is far smaller today than under John Engler. Michigan has 52259 employees today compared with 61493 in 2000. State government has passed dozens of tax cuts in the last several years which have, along with economic problems, threaten the ability of government to deliver basic human services.http://www.mitaxtruth.com/attachments/DetNews022807JacobsOpEd.PDF
4. Personal income tax rates in Michigan have fallen:
1967 2.6%
1971 3.9%
1975 4.6%
1982 5.6%
1983 6.35%
1984 5.35%
1986 4.6%
1993 4.4%
2000 4.3%
2001 4.2%
2002 4.1%
2003 4.0%
2004 3.9%
http://www.crcmich.org/Almanac/Taxes/stinchis.html
Michigan’s Tax, Revenue and Spending Situation.
1. Michigan is a federal tax donor state. For every federal tax $1.00 sent to Washington, only $.85 is returned back to Michigan. Tax Foundation. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/347.html
2. Shrinking tax revenue has made it more difficult to balance the state budget. A shortfall of around $800 million exists this year, and the deficit in next year's budget could be $1 billion or more.In the previous four years, the state wrestled with more than $4 billion in shortfalls. Tax cuts passed beginning in 2000 -- including cuts in the Personal Income Tax and the Single Business Tax, which expires at the end of the year -- have chopped state revenue by $1.4 billion a year, according to state Treasurer Robert Kleine. Michigan is losing jobs, home prices are sinking, foreclosures are rising and the state has a huge budget deficit. This is not exactly a pretty picture. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/state-tax-revenues.html
3. Michigan has cut its budget 40% in the last 6 years, when adjusted for inflation. Michigan’s tax burden is below the national average. Michigan state government is far smaller today than under John Engler. Michigan has 52259 employees today compared with 61493 in 2000. State government has passed dozens of tax cuts in the last several years which have, along with economic problems, threaten the ability of government to deliver basic human services.http://www.mitaxtruth.com/attachments/DetNews022807JacobsOpEd.PDF
4. Personal income tax rates in Michigan have fallen:
1967 2.6%
1971 3.9%
1975 4.6%
1982 5.6%
1983 6.35%
1984 5.35%
1986 4.6%
1993 4.4%
2000 4.3%
2001 4.2%
2002 4.1%
2003 4.0%
2004 3.9%
http://www.crcmich.org/Almanac/Taxes/stinchis.html
Michigan’s Tax, Revenue and Spending Situation.
1. Michigan is a federal tax donor state. For every federal tax $1.00 sent to Washington, only $.85 is returned back to Michigan. Tax Foundation. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/347.html
2. Shrinking tax revenue has made it more difficult to balance the state budget. A shortfall of around $800 million exists this year, and the deficit in next year's budget could be $1 billion or more.In the previous four years, the state wrestled with more than $4 billion in shortfalls. Tax cuts passed beginning in 2000 -- including cuts in the Personal Income Tax and the Single Business Tax, which expires at the end of the year -- have chopped state revenue by $1.4 billion a year, according to state Treasurer Robert Kleine. Michigan is losing jobs, home prices are sinking, foreclosures are rising and the state has a huge budget deficit. This is not exactly a pretty picture. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/state-tax-revenues.html
3. Michigan has cut its budget 40% in the last 6 years, when adjusted for inflation. Michigan’s tax burden is below the national average. Michigan state government is far smaller today than under John Engler. Michigan has 52259 employees today compared with 61493 in 2000. State government has passed dozens of tax cuts in the last several years which have, along with economic problems, threaten the ability of government to deliver basic human services.http://www.mitaxtruth.com/attachments/DetNews022807JacobsOpEd.PDF
4. Personal income tax rates in Michigan have fallen:
1967 2.6%
1971 3.9%
1975 4.6%
1982 5.6%
1983 6.35%
1984 5.35%
1986 4.6%
1993 4.4%
2000 4.3%
2001 4.2%
2002 4.1%
2003 4.0%
2004 3.9%
http://www.crcmich.org/Almanac/Taxes/stinchis.html
1. Michigan is a federal tax donor state. For every federal tax $1.00 sent to Washington, only $.85 is returned back to Michigan. Tax Foundation. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/347.html
2. Shrinking tax revenue has made it more difficult to balance the state budget. A shortfall of around $800 million exists this year, and the deficit in next year's budget could be $1 billion or more.In the previous four years, the state wrestled with more than $4 billion in shortfalls. Tax cuts passed beginning in 2000 -- including cuts in the Personal Income Tax and the Single Business Tax, which expires at the end of the year -- have chopped state revenue by $1.4 billion a year, according to state Treasurer Robert Kleine. Michigan is losing jobs, home prices are sinking, foreclosures are rising and the state has a huge budget deficit. This is not exactly a pretty picture. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/02/state-tax-revenues.html
3. Michigan has cut its budget 40% in the last 6 years, when adjusted for inflation. Michigan’s tax burden is below the national average. Michigan state government is far smaller today than under John Engler. Michigan has 52259 employees today compared with 61493 in 2000. State government has passed dozens of tax cuts in the last several years which have, along with economic problems, threaten the ability of government to deliver basic human services.http://www.mitaxtruth.com/attachments/DetNews022807JacobsOpEd.PDF
4. Personal income tax rates in Michigan have fallen:
1967 2.6%
1971 3.9%
1975 4.6%
1982 5.6%
1983 6.35%
1984 5.35%
1986 4.6%
1993 4.4%
2000 4.3%
2001 4.2%
2002 4.1%
2003 4.0%
2004 3.9%
http://www.crcmich.org/Almanac/Taxes/stinchis.html
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Steady Drip, Drip, Drip of Divorce Erodes GOP “Moral Values"
Another prominent married couple in the party of “family values” has decided they don’t value their family as much as they have pretended to. Another politician who defended the “sanctity of marriage” has decided his marriage is not all that holy after all.
What is it with these Republicans? Are they so eager to stick their noses into everyone else’s families that they have no time to take care of their own?
Republican Congressman Mike Rogers and his wife, Diane, on Monday (June 25, 2007) filed papers seeking a divorce after two children and 17 years of marriage. Then they issued a statement to the Livingston Press & Argus which said, in part, “We ask for respect of our family's privacy during this difficult time.”
Privacy for a family? Since when does the Republican Party believe in privacy when it comes to family matters? Rogers has spent his entire career trying to destroy the privacy that women need when facing a difficult pregnancy. Twice, he has voted for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And as the folks over at Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood point out, Rogers has voted more than 90 percent of the time with the platform of the Family Research Council, which deplores divorce.
As Rogers himself told www.nationalreview.com, “The marriage of a man and a woman is a sacred union and a fundamental element of building strong families and a strong nation.”
Yet political commentators like Bill Ballenger of Inside Michigan Politics tell the Livingston Press & Argus that Rogers’ divorce will not hurt his political fortunes.
All of which leads to the question, which the reporter should have asked, “Why not?”
Why won’t it hurt a Republican politician to say one thing and do another, to tell everyone else how to live their lives and to do as he pleases himself? Why doesn’t being hypocritical undermine the moral authority of someone like Rogers to take stands on legislation that would punish other people’s private choices?
Part of the reason is that the media will enable it. The Livingston Press & Argus story on Rogers’ divorce plans never mentioned his votes and positions on issues of privacy for other people, just blandly printed Rogers’ plea for the privacy he denies other people. Neither did the newspaper call the Family Research Council and ask how the divorce will affect that group’s view of Rogers. The next time Rogers and his cronies in the family values crowd float out a press release about the sanctity of marriage, no one in the media will point out how many of those quoted are divorced – or how many times.
Instead of meekly respecting the “privacy” of this hypocrite whose salary is paid by the taxpayers, shouldn’t the media ask a few probing questions first?
What is it with these Republicans? Are they so eager to stick their noses into everyone else’s families that they have no time to take care of their own?
Republican Congressman Mike Rogers and his wife, Diane, on Monday (June 25, 2007) filed papers seeking a divorce after two children and 17 years of marriage. Then they issued a statement to the Livingston Press & Argus which said, in part, “We ask for respect of our family's privacy during this difficult time.”
Privacy for a family? Since when does the Republican Party believe in privacy when it comes to family matters? Rogers has spent his entire career trying to destroy the privacy that women need when facing a difficult pregnancy. Twice, he has voted for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And as the folks over at Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood point out, Rogers has voted more than 90 percent of the time with the platform of the Family Research Council, which deplores divorce.
As Rogers himself told www.nationalreview.com, “The marriage of a man and a woman is a sacred union and a fundamental element of building strong families and a strong nation.”
Yet political commentators like Bill Ballenger of Inside Michigan Politics tell the Livingston Press & Argus that Rogers’ divorce will not hurt his political fortunes.
All of which leads to the question, which the reporter should have asked, “Why not?”
Why won’t it hurt a Republican politician to say one thing and do another, to tell everyone else how to live their lives and to do as he pleases himself? Why doesn’t being hypocritical undermine the moral authority of someone like Rogers to take stands on legislation that would punish other people’s private choices?
Part of the reason is that the media will enable it. The Livingston Press & Argus story on Rogers’ divorce plans never mentioned his votes and positions on issues of privacy for other people, just blandly printed Rogers’ plea for the privacy he denies other people. Neither did the newspaper call the Family Research Council and ask how the divorce will affect that group’s view of Rogers. The next time Rogers and his cronies in the family values crowd float out a press release about the sanctity of marriage, no one in the media will point out how many of those quoted are divorced – or how many times.
Instead of meekly respecting the “privacy” of this hypocrite whose salary is paid by the taxpayers, shouldn’t the media ask a few probing questions first?
Friday, June 22, 2007
"The Left" Moves Front and Center
Today's Washington Post has an interesting op-ed from E.J. Dionne, Jr. titled, "'The Left' Moves Front and Center"
From his opening lines,
Dionne puts progressive politics into a thoughtful national context.
From his opening lines,
Why can't the left get any respect?to the closing paragraph,
Whenever you use the word "left" in American politics, you feel almost compelled to add quotation marks. Today's left is not talking about nationalizing industry, abolishing capitalism or destroying the rich. What passes for "left" in American politics is quite moderate by historical standards.
But the "good ideas" that voters are demanding mostly have to do with problems
that have been framed by the left, not the right: the need to disengage from Iraq, to create health security, to ease economic inequalities. It's time to update our sense of where the political center lies and to adjust our view of "the left" accordingly.
Dionne puts progressive politics into a thoughtful national context.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Moore’s Movie Asks: How Sick Are We?
This review was written by Judy Daubenmier.
Newsweek magazine called it a “docu-tribe.” Fox News calls it “brilliant” and “up-lifting.”
Who is right?
Most Americans are having their views of Michael Moore’s new movie on health care in the United States shaped before they even have a chance to see it. “Sicko” will not be in local theaters until late June, but a few hundred people were able to judge the film with their own eyes during its “unofficial/official” premiere Saturday (June 16, 2007) in Bellaire, Michigan.
As a member of the first paying audience to see “Sicko,” I did find it “brilliant,” as Fox News described it. “Uplifting” is harder for me to go with.
Moore’s brilliance lies in his approach to the subject in a way that brings it home to the vast majority of Americans, in his willingness to let average people do the talking, and in his mixture of the comedic and the tragic. The end result is a film that tries to wipe away Americans’ unfounded, hyper-fears of federal government involvement in health care.
Rather than trying to get Americans to care about other people, Moore tries to get them to worry about themselves. That is, he tackles the issue of health care not from the vantage point of the uninsured but from the perspective of people who have health insurance but have still been denied care by their insurance company or bankrupted by care only partially covered. Up front, he recognizes the fundamental selfishness of American society.
Again, Moore’s brilliance shines through in his approach to criticism of health insurance companies. Rather than delivering a monologue against the companies, Moore found people within the industry themselves willing to discuss what they did in the name of cutting costs that they now believe harmed people – earning bonuses by denying coverage for procedures and so on. Alongside those cases are plenty of heart-rending examples of people whose family members died because of denied care.
Then comes the comedic, however, to leaven the sadness. Using hilarious footage from an American Medical Society propaganda film from the 1950s about the evils of socialized medicine, Moore confronts head-on Americans’ distrust of national health care.
Moore visits emergency rooms and clinic waiting rooms in Canada and asks people about their health care, how much it costs them, whether they can pick their own doctors, how long they have to wait for care, and so on. He interviews patients and doctors in Great Britain, even visiting a doctor in his $500,000 home to show that doctors are not impoverished by working for the government. He ventures into the heart of the socialist beast – France – to ask a group of transplanted Americans what they think of the French system. And he stuffs his bulky frame into a small car with a French government doctor who makes, get this, house calls.
Moore caps it off with a trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taking along a group of 9/11 rescue workers who can’t get care in the United States and trying to get them into the hospital at the Gitmo prison. They end up receiving high quality care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
Woven through Moore’s juxtapositions of the comedic and the tragic is a fundamental question – What kind of people are we? In interview after interview, residents of France, Great Britain, and Canada take it for granted that government should make sure everyone has health care and that they don’t mind paying for someone else’s care because they know that other people would do the same for them. It sounds so civilized, so humane, so neighborly, even Christian if that’s your upbringing.
It’s that question that hangs in the air when you leave the theater – a theater, which, by the way, donated its facilities for the film opening in exchange for profit on the concessions only. How very un-American.
Moore does not provide a final answer his own question. What kind of people are we? That’s up to us.
Newsweek magazine called it a “docu-tribe.” Fox News calls it “brilliant” and “up-lifting.”
Who is right?
Most Americans are having their views of Michael Moore’s new movie on health care in the United States shaped before they even have a chance to see it. “Sicko” will not be in local theaters until late June, but a few hundred people were able to judge the film with their own eyes during its “unofficial/official” premiere Saturday (June 16, 2007) in Bellaire, Michigan.
As a member of the first paying audience to see “Sicko,” I did find it “brilliant,” as Fox News described it. “Uplifting” is harder for me to go with.
Moore’s brilliance lies in his approach to the subject in a way that brings it home to the vast majority of Americans, in his willingness to let average people do the talking, and in his mixture of the comedic and the tragic. The end result is a film that tries to wipe away Americans’ unfounded, hyper-fears of federal government involvement in health care.
Rather than trying to get Americans to care about other people, Moore tries to get them to worry about themselves. That is, he tackles the issue of health care not from the vantage point of the uninsured but from the perspective of people who have health insurance but have still been denied care by their insurance company or bankrupted by care only partially covered. Up front, he recognizes the fundamental selfishness of American society.
Again, Moore’s brilliance shines through in his approach to criticism of health insurance companies. Rather than delivering a monologue against the companies, Moore found people within the industry themselves willing to discuss what they did in the name of cutting costs that they now believe harmed people – earning bonuses by denying coverage for procedures and so on. Alongside those cases are plenty of heart-rending examples of people whose family members died because of denied care.
Then comes the comedic, however, to leaven the sadness. Using hilarious footage from an American Medical Society propaganda film from the 1950s about the evils of socialized medicine, Moore confronts head-on Americans’ distrust of national health care.
Moore visits emergency rooms and clinic waiting rooms in Canada and asks people about their health care, how much it costs them, whether they can pick their own doctors, how long they have to wait for care, and so on. He interviews patients and doctors in Great Britain, even visiting a doctor in his $500,000 home to show that doctors are not impoverished by working for the government. He ventures into the heart of the socialist beast – France – to ask a group of transplanted Americans what they think of the French system. And he stuffs his bulky frame into a small car with a French government doctor who makes, get this, house calls.
Moore caps it off with a trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, taking along a group of 9/11 rescue workers who can’t get care in the United States and trying to get them into the hospital at the Gitmo prison. They end up receiving high quality care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
Woven through Moore’s juxtapositions of the comedic and the tragic is a fundamental question – What kind of people are we? In interview after interview, residents of France, Great Britain, and Canada take it for granted that government should make sure everyone has health care and that they don’t mind paying for someone else’s care because they know that other people would do the same for them. It sounds so civilized, so humane, so neighborly, even Christian if that’s your upbringing.
It’s that question that hangs in the air when you leave the theater – a theater, which, by the way, donated its facilities for the film opening in exchange for profit on the concessions only. How very un-American.
Moore does not provide a final answer his own question. What kind of people are we? That’s up to us.
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