Michigan voters are being asked to vote on one statewide ballot proposal tomorrow, one that will eliminate the Personal Property Tax (PPT) imposed on equipment a business owns. Businesses hate this tax because it is essentially double taxation. They pay taxes when they buy equipment and then pay the PPT every year on the same equipment. This tends to disincentivize […]

Attempting to deceive senior citizens is, simply put, sick and disgusting. Governor Snyder is summoning his inner Obi Wan Kenobi, using the Jedi Mind Trick to try to convince seniors that he’s not taxing their pensions. “I want to be proactive, ” he said, “and let people know it’s NOT a pension tax. What we did was clean up our […]

Nobody in Michigan would argue that we don’t need to take drastic measures to fix our crumbling roads. In some places, gravel roads would be an improvement over what the roads look like right now. One proposal being floated is to change the gas tax from a flat 19 cents per gallon to a percentage of the wholesale cost. This […]

MORE THAN HALF OF US NOW PAY HIGHER TAXES THANKS TO THE GOP AND YES I’M SHOUTING! A little over two years ago, I wrote a cautionary post titled “The tax timebomb that explodes in Michigan in 2012 is MUCH worse than you thought”. In it, I explained how the Republican budget passed in the first year after the 2010 […]

It’s going to take actual leadership to fill all of these Snyderholes Anyone driving in Michigan these days knows that this is an epic year for potholes. The frightening part about it is that the daytime thawing followed by nighttime freezing that is the most significant contributor to potholes is only just now underway. If you think things are bad […]

Oh, brother… Kerry Bentivolio, the “accidental Congressman”, has a solution for the atrocious problems facing Michigan road repair. He wants to — and I’m not making this up — give the federal money spent on road repair in Michigan to Republican legislators who have shown absolutely no interest in fixing our roads for the past 2+ years. In an op-ed […]

It’s getting very deep in here… Earlier this month, I wrote about how Michigan Republicans were going to soon begin a campaign of deceit in which they attempt to convince Michigan voters that they are tax-cutting warriors determined to return budget surplus funds to the taxpayers to whom they belong. This week, House Speaker Jase Bolger began a propaganda campaign […]

They hate it when you call them on their hypocrisy Yesterday I posted a tweet that went pretty viral on Twitter and on Facebook. Anne worked her magic and, by the afternoon, it had become this meme which went even more viral: Last evening, journalist E.J. Dionne retweeeted it (and again this morning). This caused all manner of self-described libertarians […]

They think you’re stupid and gullible. Don’t prove them right. In February of 2012, I penned a piece titled “The tax timebomb that explodes in Michigan in 2012 is MUCH worse than you thought”. In it, I showed how Michigan Republicans raised taxes on over half of the people in our state. Worse than that, the brunt of the tax […]

come·back – noun \ˈkəm-ˌbak\ — A return to a former position or condition (as of success or prosperity) I feel like Governor Snyder and his administration have a different dictionary than I do. He has repeatedly claimed lately (as part of the non-launch of his 2014 campaign) that Michigan is the “Comeback State”. The only thing that I can figure […]

Who woulda thunk it? In 2012, thanks to Republicans ending the tax break Michigan residents can receive for charitable giving, most people predicted that charitable giving would plummet. It wasn’t a risky prediction, of course. It’s common sense. It was a move made by the GOP to pay, in part, for a massive tax break they gave to corporations. Well, […]