Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Warning: You are about to enter the Twilight Zone.
Imagine, if you will, that you live in a state where a governor wields extraordinary power over its residents. Imagine, if you will, that your governor has the legal
authority to appoint an “Emergency Manager” to oversee the local government in the town where you reside. Imagine that the monetary compensation for the Emergency Manager of your community has no cap. Imagine that your Emergency Manager declares that there’s a financial emergency in your town and then takes over control of it. Imagine that the Emergency Manager can break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and can also fire duly elected public officials who serve your community. Imagine, if you will, that the Emergency Manager empowered by your governor to run your town has the right to dissolve your school district and to disincorporate your town. AND imagine that you and your fellow residents have no say about what is going on! Just imagine how you might feel if you lived in a state where that kind of thing was going on. Well, the people who live in Michigan may not have to imagine much longer.
Who, you might ask, will be responsible for transforming the state of Michigan into a Rod Serlingesque otherworldly undemocratic Twilight Zone right here in the United States? Why, Governor Rick Snyder and his bold band of Republican state legislators–that’s who. In January, Governor Snyder called for “Emergency Manager” legislation—and the Republican state legislators were more than happy to comply with his request.
This all seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? I’m not making it up. Karen Bouffard of The Detroit News reported the following: Legislation that would allow emergency financial managers to throw out union contracts and overrule elected officials in financially distressed municipalities and school districts was approved Wednesday by the state Senate. Similar legislation passed in the House in February, and the two chambers are working on a final version to send to Gov. Rick Snyder.
In an article published in The Michigan Messenger, Eartha Jane Melzer wrote:
Under the law whole cities or school districts could be eliminated without any public participation or oversight, and amendments designed to provide minimal safeguards and public involvement were voted down.
An amendment to require Emergency Managers to hold monthly public meetings to let people know how they are governing was rejected by Senate Republicans, along with proposals to cap Emergency Manager compensation and require that those appointed to run school districts have some background in education.
Critics say that Republicans are manipulating concerns about budget problems in order to consolidate power by undermining unions.
According to E. D. Kain: Snyder’s law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed “Emergency Managers” in their stead. But that’s not all – whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn’t get much more anti-Democratic than that.
Mark Gaffney, Michigan State President of the AFL-CIO said: This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen.
Do you agree with Mark Gaffney? Do you think what’s going on in Michigan is an assault on democracy?
SOURCES
Rachel Maddow Exposes Michigan Republicans Secret War On Democracy (Politicus USA)
Michigan Governor Plays Fast and Loose with Democracy, Invokes Radical New Powers (Forbes)
Michigan Republicans Use Budget Crisis to make Outrageous Assault on Democracy (AFL-CIO)
Michigan Senate passes emergency manager bills (Daily Tribune)
Emergency managers bill sweeps toward final approval (The Michigan Messenger)
Conyers: Emergency Manager bill ‘raises serious constitutional concerns’ (The Michigan Messenger)
Financial manager bill passes Michigan Senate (The Detroit News)
Michigan bill would impose “financial martial law” (CBS News)
“I think my absolute favorite, by far, is meshugener”
“A schlemiel is a guy that spills his soup, a schlimazel is the guy he spills it on.”
SL & Ton,
PC crashed and I didn’t see that this got posted before i completed it.
Wanted to add my old favorite “schnorer” an example of which is a friend who you keep going out to dinner with, but is never able to pay their half of the check, due to one phony reason or another. Though seemingly off the topic it really isn’t because all of the super wealthy in this country (and the world)are “schnorers,” deriving the benefit from government, but letting those with far fewer resources pick up the check.
Brian, you are not only a narcissist, you are not very smart for a guy who professes to have a Ph.D. For one thing it is not a URI, it is URL. And anti-plagiarism software is hard to circumvent as well. You can play the part of the poor benighted and put upon person all you want. You score no points here. You seem to come here with the purpose and intent to hijack discussions. You do that by making long, rambling and borderline incoherent announcements that have absolutely zero to do with the discussion. Your comments are self-centered to the exclusions of any meaningful discourse. You allude to your mysterious “research” which makes no sense in and of itself. You attack the adversarial system without explaining WHY you think it the worst thing since lutefisk. I am a trained researcher myself, sport, and your behavior bears no resemblance to any research model found in the known universe.
In short, you are rude and inconsiderate of others. Period.
“Neither I nor any other conservatives/tea partiers/etc that I know are against helping someone who is truly in need.”
Tell that to the Governor of Arizona and its’ legislature that will not pay for people who are dying and need organ transplants.
Schmuck!
@Maury: So how much time do we owe to the state (our master)?
This weekend, I will owe a plumber several thousand dollars, because I am having a second water heater installed to service the far side of the house. It has always taken too long for the water to heat up there. That will not make the plumber my master; he will remain my servant, doing for me a job that I have requested, and with some discretion on his part to apply his expertise and knowledge in order to accomplish my broad intent.
Government CAN serve the people and accomplish their intent. The fact that ours is corrupt and self-serving and beholden to the rich is not an indictment of representative government in general, it is more of an indictment of our implementation of it.
Your 28% number is based on federal only, when you add in the others it can be over 50% of a persons income. At that point you really are not a free individual but a serf to the feudal lord in his castle in DC.
This is simply not true. Under Eisenhower, the top income tax bracket was 98%, and it was routinely paid, and the economy was booming (for many reasons, but I believe the 98% tax rate contributed a great deal to the boom).
Even paying over 50% of our income in various taxes, my wife and I have more than we need, and we save it. Or spend it on frivolous things and creature comforts, like an extra water heater we could definitely live without, but I understand that convenience is worth something.
Which brings me to a salient point: You seem to think that 50% was “your” money in some crazed sense; but in actuality if you had to pay a for profit company for your roads, and pay a for profit company for police protection, and pay for profit companies for food inspection, and child education (or even babysitting so you can work, if that is all public schools do), and appliance safety so your blender doesn’t fly apart and blind you, and research at universities that make your medicines, and on and on: That 50% would be gone, and more. Just like we now know with the health insurance companies, they are going to mark it up 40% if they can get away with it, and fuck you over too if they can do that.
If you want to live off the land in the woods somewhere and walk around armed to the teeth, feel free. But to live in the modern world with the rest of us, that 50% is going to be spent either way. If taxes were optional, nobody would pay their fair share, they’d be suckers. Even if they were well-intentioned and believed in the system, they wouldn’t pay: The vast majority of citizens pretty much spend what they earn, period. That is human nature.
So feel free, Maury, to fantasize about a system that will never exist, if that makes you feel better somehow about paying what you owe for the myriad services you apparently take for granted and do not even comprehend are saving your life.
“21. I do not actually hurt people. My work does not actually hurt people. My work is of demonstrable truthfulness.”
The removal of the role of adversarial courts from legal dispute resolution would inherently promote the tyranny of the strong over the weak and encourage the violent options of self-self for dispute resolution, ergo, your ideas do harm people, troll boy.
Now blow, windbag.
Buddha Is Laughing 1, March 22, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Blah blah blah troll boy.
Pssst! You shouldn’t try to use sockpuppets. You’re not a good enough writer to pull it off.
AND
Otteray Scribe 1, March 22, 2011 at 11:53 pm
BIL, I cannot get over how mind-numbingly boring Brian is. He is rude beyond belief in hijacking and disrupting serious discussions with his endless blathering. If he could write coherent English sentences and paragraphs it would be one thing: however, he puts George Bulwer-Lytton to in the second string for being the worst writer ever. His writing style is so awful, I have nothing with which to compare it.
######################################
I began intensive study of the relationship of personality and society, using resources at and/or beyond college level in 1947, when I was eight, and my first source, previously mentioned, was the copy I now have of William S. Sadler, M.D., “Theory and Practice of Psychiatry,” C. V. Mosby, 1936. The copy I have was given to my dad in 1940 by Mary E. Wetzsteon, when my family lived in Butte, Montana.
Statement of Fact: I, Rev. J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E., Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer No. 34106, and founder of Harris Electronic Service in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, in 1950 and founder of Affirmational Faith Ministry, in the Town of Nasewaupee, Wisconsin, in 2002. Both “Harris Electronic Service” and “Affirmational Faith Ministry” are properly “registered” with the County Clerk, in Door County, Wisconsin. I have never posted any comment on the Jonathan Turley blawg using anything other than my actual name, to wit, J. Brian Harris, Ph.D., P.E.”
Consider the following which I found on the Daily Kos site:
[begin quote from Daily Kos]
Phil McGraw was trained as a psychologist (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
CalNM, jimstaro, Oogity Boogity Boo
and held a Texas license to practice. He is a Ph.D. which is a real doctoral degree.
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. – Ansel Adams
by Otteray Scribe on Sun Dec 21, 2008 at 10:50:23 PM EST
[end quote from Daily Kos]
Next, consider the following from the University of Illinois at Chicago main library”
https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/uic/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?CNT=20&Search_Arg=Harris%2C%20J.%20Brian&Search_Code=NAME_&PID=ESREAIIoDXgay77kbRzfv&BROWSE=1&HC=1&SID=1
The text at that address is:
[begin UIC library catalog text quote]
Author: Harris, J. Brian.
Title: Mental health and mental illness : cause, purpose, cure, and prevention : a bioengineering perspective / by J. Brian Harris.
Thesis/Dissertation: Thesis (Ph. D. in bioengineering)–University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998.
Published: 1998.
Physical Description: xiii, 326 leaves ; 29 cm.
Includes: Includes bibliographical references (leaves 314-325).
Notes: Typescript (photocopy).
Vita.
Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago
Location: Daley Library – Book Stacks
Call Number: BF99999 H2781 →Text me this call number
Copy: 1
Status: Available
[end UIC library catalog text quote]
As for my being a Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer:
http://online.drl.wi.gov/LicenseLookup/CredSummaryDetails.aspx?chid=59859
{begin text quote from drl.wi.gov/LicenseLookup}
Online Applications: Credential Lookup
Wisconsin Credential Lookup
Credential Summary – Details
Credential Summary for 34106-6
Name: Harris, J Brian
Credential Type: Professional Engineer (6)
Credential Number: 34106-6
Location: STURGEON BAY, WI
License Type: regular
Status credential license is current (active)
Eligible To Practice: credential license is current
First Fee Received: YES
Details Requirements Payments Orders Relationships
Details
License current through: 07/31/2012
Granted date: 05/08/2000
Multi-state: N
Orders: NONE
Specialties:
NONE
Other Names:
J Brian Harris
Consistent with JCAHO and NCQA standards for primary source verification.
Data on this page is refreshed hourly.
Questions?
Send an e-mail, or call (608) 266-2112 between 7:45 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., Central Time.
{end text quote from drl.wi.gov/LicenseLookup}
Check out the above data for yourself, and then, to the extent you have believed my work to not be real, it may behoove you to recognize the wisdom of acknowledging your having been mistaken.
I readily allow that my research approach may remind folks of chalk endlessly screeching on a blackboard.
Sorry about that, yet I have not found any other way to effectively study the enigma of human dissociation which drives many people, and especially those best adapted to their societies and cultures, into vehemently asserting demonstrably false judgments to be not false.
I have no vendetta of any sort. I do have an increasingly vivid concern regarding childhood trauma dissociation and its effects upon adult society.
With intensive and diligent library and Internet searches, I have yet to find anyone else who has found any other way to scientifically study the most profound, pervasive, and taboo-generating aspects of childhood trauma dissociation and its social/cultural consequences.
I have a simple, undamaged-infant sort of way of living:
Whatever happens, as it happens, is both necessary and sufficient, and, whatever does not happen, as it does not happen, is both unnecessary and impossible.
Therefore, I make no judgments.
In making no judgments, I have no access to any vendetta of any sort.
And I am acquainted with sorrow and grief.
Sorrow and grief inform me of what may wisely be avoided, when it is possible to avoid it.
Propose a more effective, economical, and efficient method to unriddle the enigma of human destructiveness than what I have been doing, and I will evaluate it with diligent resolve.
Rest assured that I have scoured the human historical record without finding a hint of anything which portends of being more effective, economical, and/or efficient than the method I have been using.
I welcome useful help; yet the methods of the past, as I can fathom them, merely palliate symptoms in such ways as to only increase the intensity of the process which apparently has so far endlessly intensified the root predicament.
Doing more of what causes a problem only begins to remedy the problem when it is adequately recognized that doing more of what causes a problem will never solve the problem.
Prove that my work is not valid. Merely claiming, without demonstrable evidence, that it is not valid is, at best, delusional pseudoscience.
The proof ought to be very simple within the Adversarial System if the Adversarial System is scientifically valid. What would be such proof? The following will suffice nicely:
1. Truthfully describe some mistake actually made.
2. Demonstrate that the mistake actually already made can be avoided, after having been made, through an achievable process, such that the mistake actually made was not actually made when it was actually made.
3. Avoid any and all “legal fictions” because legal fictions tend to be falsehoods, in any and every effort directed toward accomplishing (1.) and (2.).
Consider the predicament of a person falsely convicted of a crime which did not happen, the conviction being grounded in the biophysical fallacy of the legal construct of a “reasonable person.”
First, from Black’s Ninth, page 1380, the definition of “reasonable person”:
[begin quote from Black’s Ninth, “reasonable person”]
reasonable person. 1. A hypothetical person used as a legal standard, esp. to determine whether someone acted with negligence; specif., a person who exercises the degree of attention, knowledge, intelligence, and judgment that a society requires of its members for the protection of their own and others’ interests. — The reasonable person acts sensibly, does things without serious delay, and takes proper but not excessive precautions. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283(b), — Also termed reasonable man, prudent person, highly prudent person. See reasonable care under CARE. [Cases: Negligence {key symbol}233}
“The reasonable man connotes a person whose notions and standards of behavior and responsibility correspond with those generally obtained among ordinary people in our society at the present time, who seldom allows his emotions to overbear his reason and whose habits are moderate and whose disposition is equable. He is not necessarily the same as the average man — a term which implies an amalgamation of counter-balancing extremes.” R.F.V. Heuston, Salmond on the Law of Torts 56 (17th ed. 1977).
[end quote from Black’s Ninth, “reasonable person”]
Surely it is blatantly obvious that I am not a “reasonable person?
Why am I not a “reasonable person”?
1. I am not a hypothetical person.
2. Hypothetical persons do not actually exist.
3. Except as a “fiction of law,” there can be no such thing as a “reasonable person” as defined in Black’s Ninth.
4. I exercise no judgment and no judgments.
5. To such extent as society requires of me that I do what is impossible for me to do, society is abusive to me.
6. By the standards of society, I invariably take excessive precautions.
7. I am not a connotation of a person, nor am I a denotation of a person.
8. I am a real person — an actual living human, who cannot do the impossible things a hypothetical person can do and who can do possible things no hypothetical person can ever do.
9. My standards of behavior are markedly disparate from those generally obtained among ordinary persons in our society at the present time.
10. I have no responsibilities. I have only response abilities, and I only come to understand my response abilities after I have responded to some event or happening — I never know or understand without error what my response abilities will be until after I have responded to an event or happening.
11. Whenever my response abilities have been corrupted by my contact with human society, such that my reason is inadvertently contaminated by human error, I invariably find my uncontaminated affect (or emotions?) to be vastly more reliable as a guide to safe behavior than my contaminated reason.
12. Actual persons meeting the Black’s Ninth connotative definition of “reasonable persons” built the Sobibor Death Camp. Unreasonable persons escaped from Sobibor.
13. Taking the group of people who flew airplanes into the New York World Trade Center as a society, their standards of behavior and responsibility were in accord with the standards of their society and their flying airplanes into the New York World Trade Center was, within their microcosm society, the work of “reasonable persons.”
14. Especially because of my invariant observation that it is those who meet the Black’s Ninth definition of “reasonable person” who manage to do every dastardly deed I have ever encountered or heard of, that I decline any and every opportunity to ever become, in the Black’s Ninth definition sense, a “reasonable person.”
15. Because the present structure of the Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence is applicable only to “reasonable persons,” and is so by definition, the Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence is inapplicable to me, to my life, and to my life work.
16. Because any and every Adversarial System is adverse to me, to my life, and to my life work, I am left only with the Affirmational System, which is the only system I have ever even heard of which is unfailingly truthful.
17. I find that the Adversarial System excludes the Affirmational System, and, I find that the Affirmational System includes the Adversarial System only as a collection of behaviors, knowledge, and understandings wisely to be avoided.
18. I have never found any two “reasonable people” who actually agree as to what is “reasonable” or as to what a “reasonable person” is.
19. New paradigms happen.
20. My research is evidently of a new paradigm. That is plausibly why people intensely addicted to the old paradigm despise my work to such extent as my work is despised.
21. I do not actually hurt people. My work does not actually hurt people. My work is of demonstrable truthfulness.
OS,
“A total lack of understanding of the underpinnings of civilization. Also a total lack of understanding of human nature.”
Did you really expect the troll to get it? Surely you jest, sir!
“How much do you think the Koch crime family would “contribute” to the common good, voluntarily?”
Of course the Koch Brothers would contribute to the community! As you can see from the below link, they are active partners in the community!
http://www.kochfamilyfoundations.org/img/sectionImages/davidandJulia.jpg
Just think of all the starving millionaires, billionaires and ballet dancers they are saving!
Ballerina’s – not just for breakfast anymore!
Dr. Scribe:
No need to.
Maury, I feel sorry for you. I truly pity you. EOM
“You take my life when you take the means whereby I live.”
– William Shakespeare
Dr. Scribe:
I don’t think that Luke 10:30-37 is apt. Jesus is talking about someone who has been injured and is totally unable to help himself.
Neither I nor any other conservatives/tea partiers/etc that I know are against helping someone who is truly in need. We object to those who are mentally and physically able to work who don’t.
I know a guy that can hardly move but he gets up everyday and works, he doesn’t ask for anything from the state. He pays people to cut his lawn and do the stuff around the house he cant. I have offered to do these things for him and he tells me he does not want charity or sympathy.
Whenever I see some ignorant fuck receiving government charity/handouts who can walk and think, I think of my friend and I want to bitch slap the lazy fuck taking the handout. My friend and people like him are paying for those scum bags to live. Seems to me those poor excuses for human beings ought to be lined up at my friends house doing his yard work and helping out around his house.
“I think my absolute favorite, by far, is meshugener”
“A schlemiel is a guy that spills his soup, a schlimazel is the guy he spills it on.”
SL & Ton
Tony C:
“You mean as a corrupt government in league with a professionally criminal corporate structure using a runaway military to loot the United States, fleece its citizens with Ponzi schemes and toilet-paper contracts, and the rest of the world along with us? I’m with ya on that one, bucko.”
Yes that is about right, although I disagree on the causes and some of the particulars. But all in all, that is about what is going on.
We can throw in Obama’s recent adventure in Libya without so much as a Constitutional hidiho and I think you have it covered. Welcome to Fascist America. I cant believe it happened in my life time and there seems to be no stopping it.
I think someone mentioned ovens on another thread, I doubt it will be ovens but concentration/detention centers? Those I can believe.
It has been coming for a long time, incrementally but the last 10 years seem the worse. Afghanistan and Iraq sped it up along with DHS and the Patriot Act. Those 2 things need to be shut down before it is too late. Maybe it already is. Once you create an entity like DHS it has a life of its own and any threat to the lively hood of the people who work there will be thwarted with force.
But then what did you expect from big government?
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
Gerald Ford
It is doing so at an alarming rate through the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
OS,
They are all for Caesar…..even McDonalds offers it…(I think)…see…..
“Taxes should be voluntary.” If I did not know our troll was serious, I would think it were snark.
A total lack of understanding of the underpinnings of civilization. Also a total lack of understanding of human nature. How much do you think the Koch crime family would “contribute” to the common good, voluntarily? There are philanthropists among the well to do, but there are a lot more ‘takers’ than ‘givers.’ The average teabagger knowledge of the Constitution and obligation to the community is somewhere between nil and none. The motivation is clearly greed rather than giving and support for the community. Such people are despicable human beings who take from the less well off to make sure the rich get richer. They have drunk the Kool-Aid for sure.
They have forgotten, or never knew, one of the most important lessons: Luke 10:30-37
Kasich sounds a little bit shaky with that idea. He should have leased it to a private company to run it and use the profits to pay down debt. That way he takes the burden of payroll and expenses from state funds and uses it as a cash cow for the state.
the only way to get business into a state is tax incentives and a favorable regulatory environment. You don’t need a committee which is being funded by Wall St. Sounds more like a way for Kasich to line his pockets than to stimulate business.
Tony C:
Taxes should be voluntary, and no I am not an anarchist. You have to have some government to protect people like me from people like you.
Taxes are not about taxes but about how much of an individuals life should be give up for the state. Taxes are nothing but money earned by labor which is nothing but time you spend, time from your life I might add. So how much time do you owe the state? Black slaves owed all or most of their time to the Master.
So how much time do we owe to the state (our master)? 10% should be enough to do everything or even 15% total all taxes; state, federal, local, sales, property. Your 28% number is based on federal only, when you add in the others it can be over 50% of a persons income. At that point you really are not a free individual but a serf to the feudal lord in his castle in DC.
It all comes down to individual liberty, and the left is decidedly not on the side of freedom. At every turn they desire to limit our freedoms. Taxes are just one way.
From The Raw Story (3/22/2011)
Top 6 things Republicans consider more important than job creation
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/22/top-6-things-republicans-consider-more-important-than-job-creation/
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – Republicans won dramatic victories last November by promising to mitigate high unemployment. “This coming election is about one issue: jobs,” to-be Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said weeks before election day. “It’s about jobs that were promised to the American people by the current administration, and were never delivered.”
But in the three months since taking over the House and expanding their voices in the Senate, Republicans have yet to pass a jobs-focused bill, instead prioritizing numerous social and cultural issues that are unrelated to job creation — and have little or no chance of becoming policy.
Here are six such legislative goals they’ve been hard at work on.
1) Curtailing Abortion Rights
A top priority for Republicans, H.R. 3, “The No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act” is on its way to passage in the House after successfully maneuvering through the Judiciary and Ways And Means Committees.
Though the GOP stripped out some of its most controversial provisions — such as denying exemptions to a woman even in cases of rape, incest and when her life is in danger — the measure raises costs for businesses by eliminating tax deductions on employee health insurance plans that cover abortion.
2) Defunding Planned Parenthood
The House last month approved a measure 240-185, sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), to cut off all $317 million in Title X funding for Planned Parenthood and all other health care providers that offer abortions.
Under the law, Title X money cannot be used for abortion, so — beyond the shot across Planned Parenthood’s bow — Republicans effectively voted to strip funding enjoyed by mostly low-income women for medical services like cancer screenings, breast exams and HIV tests.
3) Defunding NPR
In the wake of James O’Keefe’s highly edited video sting that defamed National Public Radio executives, House Republicans last week called an emergency session to push through legislation that eliminates taxpayer funds to the radio-based news agency. It passed 228-192 on a partisan vote, winning over no Democrats and losing 7 Republicans.
What’s happening in Ohio:
From Think Progress (3/22/2011)
Gov. Kasich’s Jobs Plan: Drink More Booze, Hand The Profits To A Private Development Company
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/22/kasich-drunkohio/
Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has played a leading role in the Republican assault on workers’ rights, pursuing a bill to strip his state’s public employees of collective bargaining rights. But he has also been actively pushing his state’s assets into the hands of private corporations, with his main job creation plan being the formation of JobsOhio, a private entity that will be tasked with coaxing business into the Buckeye state. Similar schemes have not worked in other states, but Kasich has plowed forward nonetheless.
Part of Kasich’s plan for financing his new, privatized development agency (of which he will be chairman) includes leasing the state’s liquor stores to JobsOhio, which will then use the money to run its operations. Kasich claims that this will work because Ohioans are increasing their alcohol consumption:
The success of Gov. John Kasich’s plan to recruit new business to Ohio will hinge heavily on just how much Ohioans drink alcohol. Kasich last week unveiled his state budget proposal, which includes a plan to lease the state’s liquor distribution operation — which of late has drawn record profits — and use the cash to fund his private economic development machine.
“Over the years people drink more. It’s just a natural revenue stream,” Kasich said last Tuesday while outlining his proposal, drawing a smattering of laughter from reporters. “So, everybody wanted to buy it. Everybody was interested in it.”
Whether Ohio’s best “natural” asset is its booze intake is up for debate. But all jokes about Ohio’s increasing drunkenness aside, a deeper look at the numbers indicates that Ohio is getting the short end of the stick on this deal. As Ohio Budget Watch found, Kasich’s plan involves the state selling about $7 billion in expected revenue from state liquor stores to JobsOhio for just $1.5 billion:
Profits on liquor sales generate $228 million for the state of Ohio every year. JobsOhio is set to take over liquor sales oversight and own that revenue stream. They, in turn, will sell 30 years worth of that revenue — worth around $6.8 billion — to a group of investors (recruited by a Wall Street firm, who will of course take a cut) in return for a lump sum payment to the state. According to the administration, they expect to receive about $1.5 billion in return for this $6+ billion in state revenue.
And because JobsOhio doesn’t actually have any money to pay even the $1.5 billion, it will “turn to Wall Street to issue bonds to finance the deal.” As Plunderbund noted, “Wall Street, which obviously expects a return on its investment, won’t finance the deal unless Ohio (i.e. Kasich) is willing to allow them to essentially buy a twenty to thirty year revenue stream for pennies on the dollar.” Thus, Kasich is selling his state’s liquor stores at fire-sale prices, even as it faces billions in deficits.
BIL, I cannot get over how mind-numbingly boring Brian is. He is rude beyond belief in hijacking and disrupting serious discussions with his endless blathering. If he could write coherent English sentences and paragraphs it would be one thing: however, he puts George Bulwer-Lytton to in the second string for being the worst writer ever. His writing style is so awful, I have nothing with which to compare it.