Since the Tea Party is such an amorphous group with no political center of gravity, it’s hard to get your arms around how much support Gov. Rick Snyder had the first time he ran. It’s unlikely that the anti-tax types plunked for the angriest Mayor in America, but we’ll never know if many of them [...]
For nearly a month this spring, much of Michigan experienced torrential rains and unprecedented flooding, resulting in millions of dollars in damages to homes, businesses, and public buildings and infrastructure. Recently I joined with other members of Michigan’s congressional delegation on two important efforts to get Michigan communities, families and businesses the help they need [...]
This will be the final “sideline” of this school year marking 19 years of this publication. Beginning in September, I will start my 20th and final volume. I truly enjoy putting this together each week. I believe it is an important vehicle of communication for our staff and board. Because we now have it on [...]
For obvious reasons, nobody in the capitol press corps would ever admit this publicly. But if you applied a little truth serum, some would begrudgingly concede that Gov. Rick Snyder is a master at staying on message. You can come at him every which way from Sunday and if he does not want to answer [...]
Recently, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, held the latest in a series of hearings to examine how U.S.-based multinational corporations use loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying U.S. taxes. An earlier hearing examined tax avoidance strategies at Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard; our recent hearing looked at Apple. Our purpose with [...]
It’s quiz time. A chance to test your memory on the back porch or hammock at your chalet up north. The following questions are from a variety of blogs that have appeared here over the last year or so. five points for each right answer with the answers at the bottom of this column … [...]
Here is an old Vermont story that is told about Clem and Abigail who had been married for many years: One morning over the breakfast table they had a horrendous verbal fight. Clem said things he shouldn’t have said and so did Abigail. Finally, they both stopped arguing and Clem was the first to apologize. [...]
As unlikely as it might seem, a corpse could wink in 2013. At times, legislation that was considered to be dead due to lack of sufficient support, unexpectedly re-emerges with a real chance of being passed by the legislature. The phrase often used for this phenomenon at the Capitol is “the corpse just winked.” Clearly, [...]
Women in general decide elections. They vote in larger numbers than men. Independent women, more specifically, wield tremendous electoral power because they don’t vote the party, they vote the person. So appealing to female citizens is mucho importante. When a relatively unknown congressman from Pleasant Ridge ran the first time for governor, it was wife [...]
Benzie County will be facing a difficult decision in the not too distant future. The Benzie County Sheriff’s Office does not have the staff nor does it have the budget to provide what is needed for Benzie County. We have officers who are on duty with little or no backup. We have a police force [...]