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