Skip to main content

"No" on Proposal 1

In less than a week, Michigan voters (well, at least around 20% of registered Michigan voters, if the projections are accurate) will go to the polls to vote on Proposal 1. There have been lots of "Vote Yes" television ads trotting out the big guns and the little people alike, but I remain unconvinced -- I'm voting “no” on Proposal 1 for a variety of reasons.

The sales tax increase will give Michigan one of the highest sales taxes in America at 7%, which means that tourism will most likely be negatively impacted, even though we have nice things like abundant water and surly retail providers. This new normal of 7% will have the greatest impact on those with low to middle socioeconomic status -- it's estimated that Proposal 1 will raise taxes by about $200 per year for every person in Michigan, and it's certain that a family of four could find better ways to spend $800 over twelve months. (And let’s remember that when the rich say that the poor don’t pay taxes, they’re conveniently forgetting things like property taxes and sales taxes such as these, which in low SES populations make up a higher impact.)

What about all those positive advertisements? Well, by presenting a united front through the media, politicians and corporations alike show that they support the interests of the other, rather than the interests of the citizens who elect the politicians and buy the products the corporations produce. In other words, they’re trying to see just how much shit they can get away with before the citizens of Michigan wake the fuck up. As much of the significant road damage comes from heavy industrial vehicles used by corporations -- with these same corporations receiving significant tax breaks (or “corporate welfare”) under the Snyder administration -- it's OK to curtail some of this corporate welfare to help fund infrastructure repair.

(As a sorta-aside, the claim that this tax increase will also help with schools and police is utter obfuscatory garbage. The same claims were made about the lottery, and this has been shown to be consistently false. The old axiom is sad but true -- if the teachers of Michigan can be fucked, the state government will find a way to fuck them.)

There is no doubt that our roads and bridges need to be fixed, and there is no doubt that Michigan citizens will continue to be injured and die because of this neglect of infrastructure. But blackmailing the Michigan voters with mendacious bullshit that hurts the majority of the Michigan voters is beyond the pale. It's the job of the legislature to govern, not just to be elected, and part of moral governance is recognizing the dire need for infrastructure projects, projects that historically create jobs within the normal parameters of state budgeting, and to present Proposal 1 as the last resort is shameful. Too bad that the legislators of Michigan, and the corporations that buy their policies, are beyond shaming.

(Of course, if there was vision in governance, Michigan would immediately legalize marijuana for personal and medical use, and use the resulting tax funds accrued for infrastructure, drug treatment programs, research, industrial paper production from hemp, and so much more. One possible Pure Michigan logo could be the Michigan mitten holding a joint, but that’s for the ad men to decide. For additional information on Proposal 1 and why you should vote "no" on that patchwork piece of dog offal, going here is a good start.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...
Post a Comment
Read more

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Natural's Not In It

  For nearly seven years on the button, Courtney and I lived on Perch Lake, just outside of Gaylord. Right next to Perch Lake was The Natural Golf Course, eighteen holes that twisted and turned through the best nature that the 45th Parallel could offer. The picture above is the view of the first green, and if you left the wooden bridge to the right and briefly ambled through the woods and over a rusted metal fence, you'd get right to our old driveway. Every now and again, an errant golf ball would appear at the edge of our property, like a single egg laid by an itinerant duck. Of the three major elitist sports -- golf, tennis, skiing -- I golfed because the barrier to entry was pretty low and the interest in golf on my Dad's side of the family was high, from playing the sport to watching it on television on the weekends. As spare clubs were abundant and my growth spurt had yet to overwhelm statistical norms, my grandmother would take prepubescent me to the Roscommon driving ran...
Post a Comment
Read more