This morning Susan Demas announced that today’s column would be her last for MLive.com, apparently because she was asked by her full-time employer to stop. We didn’t always agree with Demas (like the time she called us a hype machine – tough but fair) but nearly always found that her posts were valuable to the conversation in Lansing. We’ve compiled our favorites of her columns, and we hope you read and enjoy them if you haven’t already.
1. The time she reminded everyone Rick Snyder isn’t a moderate:
Rick Snyder has presided over a right-wing agenda that would make John Engler convulse with envy. It’s an agenda of which our governor is immensely proud.
It started last year with a budget that chopped K-12 and higher education. It continued with his plan to cut business taxes more than $2 billion annually, between the corporate income tax and Personal Property Tax (PPT), while raising them on individuals, like seniors and middle class families. And Snyder has waded into social conservative issues, signing into law a ban on gay partner benefits for public employees.
Asked two more times for a number, Shirkey said no auto plants have been built in Michigan for the last decade. Shirkey also said there is “plenty of data” in Right to Work states where employment has allegedly gone up.
We Are the People blasted Shirkey for not knowing General Motors built its Delta Township plant 10 minutes away from his 65th House District. The plant employs nearly 4,000 workers and, according to UAW Local 602, there are 41 workers at that plant who live in Shirkey’s district.
The plant, which opened in 2006, generates $255.9 million in wages and pays $4.2 million in property taxes, according to General Motors.
3. The time she noted conservative hypocrisy on health care exchanges:
One Scott Hagerstrom of the the free-market group Americans for Prosperity Michigan went so far as to accuse GOP Gov. Rick Snyder of taking a bribe from the Obama administration.
I’m not kidding you. Hagerstrom accused the governor of “misleading” Republican lawmakers in an effort to curry favor with the president — who we all know is the reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx’s love child — to get more federal cash.
Hagerstrom sneered that Snyder is “not a true conservative” and Republicans voting for the exchange have “declared war on the Tea Party.”
Holt Tea Party activist Joan Fabiano chimed in with a grammatically incorrect official statement that the exchange was “a [sic] unnecessary set back [sic] in the freedom of Michigan citizens” and “voters will not forget this affront.”
In Gov. Rick Snyder’s latest special message, he made a vague pronouncement that community colleges, universities and trade schools should stop “overproducing” graduates in areas Michigan doesn’t need.
He notes that Michigan could use people trained in computer programming, math, health care and engineering. But the governor doesn’t say what programs colleges should cut or cut back.
There are a couple big problems with this big government solution. The first is that in Snyder’s new business friendly culture, shouldn’t we let the market decide? After all, if parents and students want to invest in art history or classical languages degrees, who is Gov. Snyder to dictate that schools stop offering them?
5. The time she wrote about all the men calling women hookers in Lansing:
But just this weekend, former Michigan Republican Party Executive Director Greg McNeilly decided he needed some attention (you’re welcome) and called Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) a “government hooker.”
That was the second time he tweeted that in a month — yes, it was such a good burn, McNeilly had to use it again. The first time was to teach the little lady a lesson for being all highfalutin and writing a Free Press op-ed that sexism still exists in the state Capitol (no!) She’s also “an amazing mess of ignorance.”
That’s high praise from McNeilly, who routinely misspells his rants against anyone opposing (Republican) education reforms and amazingly disparages them as “Bull Connors” — yes, after the racist Alabama public safety chief who turned the fire hoses on civil rights activists in the 1960s.