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Adam
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Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:24 pm |
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Dave Starr
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| It's good to know that our legislators are working on important things instead of wasting time on frivolous items like dealing with declining revenues. |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:02 am |
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back again
F L I N T O I D
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| i have to totally agree with you dave. it's almost silly even though he'll look like a barnburner to folks in his area. |
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even a small act of goodness may be a tiny raft of salvation across the treacherous gulf of sin, but one who drinks the wine of selfishness, and dances on the little boat of meaness, sinks in the ocean of ignorance.
P.Y. |
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Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:09 pm |
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00SL2
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| Speaking of what they're working on in Lansing, how about the ban on texting while driving but not a ban on using cell phones while driving? I talked with Gonzales about this and told him cell phones are a worse problem, and I believe the reason they didn't touch cell phone ban is because they all use them while they're driving. He acknowledged he does use cell phone while driving but "texting" is a "start," that they can change it later. |
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Wed Jan 27, 2010 6:41 pm |
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back again
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| personally, texting while driving is a bit too much attention taken from driving as good driving requires defensive alertness also. |
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even a small act of goodness may be a tiny raft of salvation across the treacherous gulf of sin, but one who drinks the wine of selfishness, and dances on the little boat of meaness, sinks in the ocean of ignorance.
P.Y. |
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Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:02 am |
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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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Mitaxpayers.org
Compensation for Michigan's private sector citizens decreased by 10.3% between 2007 and the third quarter of 2009 - the most recent data available from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Most Michiganders are earning less and struggling to get by.
But one group is actually becoming richer in Michigan: government employees. State and local government employee compensation increased by 5.5% during the same period, and federal employee compensation is up by 7.5%.
And the good times will keep rolling for state government bureaucrats who are scheduled to receive a nice 3% pay increase this year unless two-thirds of state lawmakers vote to halt the pay hike.
Who pays for generous government employee pay increases in these tough times? Remember that Governor Granholm and state lawmakers hiked the state income tax by 12% and the state business tax by 22% back in 2007? Those tax hikes meant more money out of your shrinking paycheck and into the fatter paychecks of Michigan's government class.
This year, Governor Granholm needs even more money to afford her proposed state budget - which includes the state employee pay increase. So Granholm is pushing a plan that would lower the sales tax from 6% to 5.5% but extend the tax to a whole slew of new purchases currently exempt from the sales tax - things like hair cuts, oil changes, carpet cleaning, yard mowing, pet grooming and thousands of other services. This sales tax extension would take another $550,000,000 out of citizens' pockets in 2011 and transfer that money to Lansing.
Lawmakers supporting this year's state bureaucrat pay increase argue that state employees "have suffered enough" in recent budgets. But the government's own statistics show the opposite to be true: taxpayers have suffered far more than "enough" while government employee pay and benefit levels keep rising.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics documents that government employee benefits cost twice as much as full-time, private sector benefits. What accounts for the difference? Consider the jackpot benefits that many government employees receive:
Public school employees contribute an average of 4.2% to their health care plans while private sector citizens pay an average of 22% of their own health care costs.
Expensive "defined benefit" retirement plans are almost non-existent in the private sector, but are commonplace for public school, public university and local government employees.
Macomb County government employees enjoy a taxpayer-paid retirement benefit that allows many to retire at the age of 50!
There was a time when government employees enjoyed better benefits and job security than most taxpayers, but were paid less than comparable private sector employees. Not anymore. Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics document that today, the government class enjoys higher salaries, richer benefits and far better job security than the citizens they are supposed to be serving.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that government employees are much more bullish about the economy than private sector employees. A national poll conducted in December by the survey firm Rasmussen Reports found that 24% of government employees rated the economy as good or excellent while just 9% of those in the private sector were so upbeat.
The 'public servants' have become the masters over taxpayers. And it is costing your family plenty.
Leon Drolet
MI Taxpayers Alliance
www.mitaxpayers.org |
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Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:28 pm |
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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:34 pm |
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Adam
F L I N T O I D
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Michigan government workers get their raises
LANSING, Mich. – The fight over whether union-represented Michigan state government workers will get a scheduled 3 percent raise later this year is expected to continue in the state Legislature.
An effort to rescind the raises for roughly 35,000 state workers fell four votes short Wednesday in the Republican-led state Senate. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, who says the state can't afford the raises during its budget crisis, plans to hold another vote on the proposal soon.
Unionized state workers are scheduled to get the raise Oct. 1 unless two-thirds of the members of both the Republican-led Senate and Democrat-led House vote to eliminate it by mid-April.
"We're going to come back to this," Bishop said after Wednesday's vote. "We can't afford to let this go."
Republicans say the state can't afford the raises, which would cost the state an estimated $48 million in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. Michigan is wrestling with a projected $1.7 billion shortfall for the period.
Democrats counter that state workers should get the raise, in part because they already have made sacrifices and concessions in recent years. The raises were included in contracts negotiated between unions and the state in 2007.
The vote ended 22-15 with all but one Republican voting for it. The resolution failed since the GOP needed 26 votes.
Senator Bruce Patterson, R-Canton Township, is the only Republican to refrain from voting.
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Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:38 pm |
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