It Ain't Over til it's Over...

"The end is not yet."

- Matthew 24: 6

There were no midnight watches required at the state capitol this time around. A string of deals came together without a government shutdown and without the kind of saber-rattling many feared was imminent. But the relative peace may have more to do with the spectre that both the lawmakers and the Governor have sensed on the doorstep. The strangely cobbled deal that extended the sales tax to a wild array of services has festered and corroded for the last four weeks and it now appears destined for, at the very least, a makeover. Big business, already in a foul humor, has blown a collective gasket over the nooks and crannies of the tax and are now proposing that the thing be scuttled and in its place they're inviting (!) an increase in the Michigan Business Tax. Governor Granholm says she's willing to take the thing back to the studs and start again but that it has to replace every cent of revenue it wipes out, and (here's the rub), cannot be temporary.

Ah, the good times.

Governor Granholm will be my guest this Sunday morning on Flashpoint to take about what a strange trip it's been. I'm hoping to include a segment of questions from the extended Flashpoint family --- that means YOU. If you'd like to send a question for consideration, send it to us at flashpoint@clickondetroit.com

See you Sunday.

- Devin

A Primary Concern

"I'm not a member of any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."
--- Will Rogers

In the high stakes chess game over the Presidential primary schedule, just as Michigan democrats felt they had maneuvered the candidates into checkmate, four of the candidates have swept their pieces off the board and are going home. Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have announced that they will not be participating in the Michigan primary on January 15th. They can certainly (and legitimately) argue that they prefer not to run afoul of the national party rules (which mandate a strict if largely illogical order of state primaries and caucuses), but cynics might suggest that it's easier to stand on principle when the poll numbers suggest that Hillary Clinton is going to take Michigan anyway. But where now, Michigan democrats? If you move the primary back to February, you do so with your tail between your legs, and if you keep it in mid-January, you're throwing a very lonely party.
I can hear Will Rogers laughing...
-Devin

Back to work...

"I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they play!"
- Andrew Lang

After a hiatus of far greater length than is explicable, the Flashpoint blog is back in business. And it comes after one of the stranger events I've ever covered. A capitol building can be dramatic at the shank of midnight; nothing new about that. But the bend and sway of events last Sunday night in Lansing were dark, mysterious, and precarious in an Edgar Allan Poe kind of way. (In fact, when I think back to the back-and-forth footwork required of reporters and legislators alike, it seems shrouded in that haze so characteristic of late 19th century literature.) But after a government shutdown that lasted about as long as the drive back from Lansing, it was fascinating to find the sun dawning on a Monday morning in which both parties felt they had what they had sought; Democrats had a package that was largely the one the Governor had offered at the beginning and Republicans were, with just a few exceptions, able to say the tax increases passed without GOP support.
So all's well? Not so fast. Business is fuming with the new service tax structure (and I don't just mean shoe shiners and fortune tellers --- the Governor has gotten herself sideways with the state's heavyweights with this deal), and we've got three weeks and counting to find more than $400 million dollars in cuts. This Sunday morning, I sense a donnybrook right about 10 AM on Local 4...
- Devin