Redstate

By RightMichigan.com Posted in April 15 | Breaking News | Michigan | Tax day — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

"Excuse me, you don't happen to have the time do you?"

"I KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS!!!!!  I DON'T NEED THE PRESSURE, OK?!?!?!?!?!"

You've seen the ads and you know that April 15th includes one stress-packed trip to the post office.  It's tax day.  If you're still working on your returns then A) you have my sympathies and B) why exactly are you surfing the net right now?  Shouldn't you be typing away on that calculator or something?

Frankly, I've never understood what all the fuss was about but that could have something to do with the fact that I realized very early in life that it was worth paying a CPA whatever he asked to take care of the filing for me because it was worth the cash in stress-relief alone.  Guess I'm not quiiiite as Dutch as they come.  But I know a lot of you are and I wish you all the best today and a massive rebate in the coming months.

Heaven knows Michigan families could use all the help we can get.  It sure isn't coming from Lansing or our friends in Congress.  While other states quibble and wonder whether or not they're going to have to cope with a national recession, here in the Great Lakes State we scoff at the R word.  We blew by that threshold years ago and never looked back.  Come back and see us again once you start to creep up on "depression" territory.  Then we'll talk.

Meanwhile we'll just hang out here and do the best we can to ride this thing out for the next three years until we can get a leadership change in Lansing.  Not that it'll be easy.  Three years contain a heck of a lot of opportunities to make things worse, after all.  Just take a look at the foreclosure rates.  

The Detroit News reports this morning that our rates were up 10.3% over where they were in March of 2007 and the number of foreclosures that month ranked us fifth in the nation.  

Right now one in every 475 households has been foreclosed.  That's a lot of folks unable to pay their mortgages.  

Probably won't help then if a new study by Michigan State University proves accurate.  The Associated Press tells us this morning that researchers are predicting tourism will drop this calendar year.  They figure prices will go up as much as four percent, visitors who actually show up won't spend any more than they did last year and the total number of folks stopping by will drop by about two percent.

Sort of that old economic truism we used to be so familiar with here in Michigan.  If the nation catches a sniffle Michigan catches a cold?  I remember back during the last gubernatorial election, Dick DeVos used to warn folks pretty regularly that we were on the cusp of missing an entire national economic recovery and that if the nation were to somehow slip into a recession (hasn't happened yet but it sure looks possible) we'd be up the creek without a paddle, so to speak.

Low and behold.

So what's a brother to do?  Well, first things first.  Make sure you make it to the post office today!  And that goes doubly for all the heads down in the metro-Detroit area.  Even if you filed your returns months ago the post office is calling.  It's calling you.  Today.  

From 5pm to 7pm this evening the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance is going to be holding a rally at the Redford Post Office.  That's on the west side of Beech Daly Road, south of I-96.  

And, bonus, you'll get to see the "scene of the crime!"  This is the spot where Rose Bogart from the Wayne County Taxpayers Association has been harassed by the police for exercising her constitutional rights to try to chase Andy Dillon from his office at the Capitol.

This is the District where the Speaker continues to send his taxpayer funded State employees to block petition circulators.  To follow them around in cars.  To stalk them all the way to their homes.  To mob them, seven to one.  On our dime.

If Rose's group can gather 8,724 signatures by the end of this month then voters will have the chance to send quite a message about raising taxes to Lansing.

The state employees will be out in full force today, you can believe that.  Half expect a House Democrat Caucus staff meeting to break out in the middle of the festivities.  Look at it as an opportunity to introduce yourself to the guy or girl on the other end of the phone every time you call your State Representative!  Or look at it as something else entirely.  Either way, hope everyone will be able to make it!

Dillon and his team gave us the biggest tax hike in Michigan history (just ask him...).  Now that it's tax day it's time to let him know how we feel about it.