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By RightMichigan.com Posted in Barack Obama | Breaking News | Michigan | voter disenfranchisement — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

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

At least the Senate was at work yesterday.  While Andy Dillon's House Democrats continued their Easter break the folks across the hall at the Capitol were busy working on a plan to increase education spending across the State and low and behold, they actually got something done.  Not that that's going to make the Granholm / Cherry team happy.  The Detroit News reports that the spending increase moved through the chamber Wednesday significantly increases per pupil funding for every public school in the State while giving twice as large a boost to the poorest districts.

Who could argue with that?  Pretty much anyone with a D after their name on the ballot.  Despite early indications that the State's going to face another massive budget deficit the administration has been pushing for a much larger spending increase.  Because it's not irresponsible at all to spend more while you're planning on taking in less.  That's what passes for living within your means according to the governor's new math.

Of course the lefties are still yet to show where they plan on finding that extra cash what with their hollow promises that they won't raise our taxes again.  So in the meantime, kudos to the Senate GOP for at least not entirely loosing their minds and finding a way to reign in the latest Granholm tax and spend scheme.

Good news for taxpayers and even good news for the education establishment which is going to see their appropriation jump.  And believe me, today's a day to savor any good news we can find because it's not turning up most places you look.  

First there are the new jobless figures.  We find ourselves with the dubious honor of leading the nation in the strength of our unemployment lines.  Again.  This time with a national unemployment rate of 4.8% Michigan clocks in at a staggering 7.2%.  But those numbers look a lot worse when you dig a little deeper and realize that our labor force is declining too.  In other words, there are fewer people even bothering to look for jobs and STILL the unemployment rate rises.  While people drop off the "unemployment books" if you will.  Double-whammy.

The smaller labor force also could reflect migration out of state in search of better job markets. And it could reflect the decision by many potential workers to retire early, to go back to school, to volunteer or to focus on family activities in lieu of looking for a job.

Over the past 12 months, employers have reported a decline of 62,000 payroll jobs in the state, or 1.4% of the total.

Then there's a new report that helps shed a little light on that declining labor force.  Detroit lost three times as many people as any other metro area in the Nation over the last two years.  Overall it was a population drop of over 27,300.  There were only five other cities in the United States of America that lost as many as 5,000.  

Hurts, right?  Well bite down on something because the word out of American Axle yesterday was even worse.  

In his first interview since the start of the UAW strike a month ago now the company's Chairman, Dick Dauch leveled a particularly thinly veiled threat to just plain pull the plug on tens of thousands of Michigan jobs.  Period.  The Ivory Tower reports:

What Dauch said he does not understand is the union's apparent unwillingness to bargain a concessionary deal similar to others already blessed by the UAW for GM, Ford, Chrysler, Dana, Delphi Corp. and others.

"They have fashioned something to be very supportive" to those firms, Dauch said. "Why are we being focused on, or profiled, not to have a similar pattern to the peer groups we compete with?"

"...We will not be forced into bankruptcy in order to reach a market-competitive cost structure in the United States. If we cannot compete for new contracts in the U.S., there will be no work in the original plants," Dauch said, referring to operations in Detroit, Three Rivers and in the New York towns of Tonawanda and Cheektowaga.

It's worth noting, and Dauch asserted it again in the interview, that the UAW is both A) absent from the negotiation table and B) bat crap crazy.  

OK, so Dick Dauch didn't refer to the UAW in those specific terms but one can draw the inference.  While Big Labor refuses to negotiate away from an all-in labor cost of over $73 an hour per employee they've long ago sat down with the company's competitors in other states (like Ohio) and ironed out deals that are closer to $20 an hour.  To more or less quote Corporal Hicks, from the 80s sci-fi classic Aliens... (rent it tonight) "that just doesn't make any gosh darn sense."  

What is it with prominent Michigan Democrats refusing to play ball?  And why is Ron Gettelfinger the common thread?  The head of the UAW he's the guy maybe single handedly responsible for jeopardizing tens of thousand of jobs in metro Detroit.  He's also one of the four big negotiators attempting to reach a solution with Michigan's delegation to the Democrat Convention in Denver later this year.  

And it looks like those talks are dead now too, after a ruling handed down yesterday by a federal judge in Detroit.  The Associated Press reports:

(The judge) agreed with (the ACLU's) claim that it would be illegal to allow only Michigan's two major political parties to get information on who voted and whether they took a Republican or Democratic ballot.

"The state is not required to provide the party preference information to any party," Edmunds wrote in her 21-page order. "When it chooses to do so, however, it may not provide the information only to the major political parties."

Just one more road block, right?  Wrong.  The Michigan Democrat Party was quick to talk to the press and let folks know that that's it.  It's done.  No revote now.  It's too late.  Pack up and go home.

"We need those lists to prevent people who voted in the Republican primary from voting in the Democratic do-over. Those are DNC rules," said Michigan Democratic Party spokeswoman Liz Kerr, referring to the Democratic National Committee. "This is basically the final straw in preventing us from having a do-over election."

The "final straw."  Goodbye democratic process, hello voter disenfranchisement.  This message brought to you by Michigan Democrats, Barack Obama and the UAW.