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...Among liberals and progressives, there is a puzzling admiration for Crist, long considered by Democratic and Republican veterans of Florida's political scene to be something of an opportunist if not a lightweight....

Voters in Michigan have a slightly less gloomy view of the economy but strongly disapprove of the job Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm is doing. Right now at least Republicans have an even chance of regaining the governor’s mansion next year in a state that has been trending blue of late. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Michigan voters finds 37% who would vote for an unspecified Republican candidate for governor versus 36% who favor an unnamed Democrat. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are undecided.

<p>LANSING, MI. - The Michigan Governor, Jennifer Granholm, and the Michigan Legislature could have avoided deep cuts to education by passage of an increase to the wager tax on the Detroit Casinos. The wager tax (18% State and 6% City of Detroit) had not been increased since 1997 could have been raised to comparable levels of other surrounding States, and filled the revenue shortfall and spared Michigan children deep cuts in education K-12.</p>

<p>LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan's governor wants you to give your mailbox a good shake.</p> <p>Jennifer Granholm has proclaimed Saturday "Shake Your Mailbox Day" in Michigan.</p>

GRAND RAPIDS -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm told Kent County educators Friday the state's school financing system "clearly is not working" and said lawmakers must agree to both a short-term fix as well as long-term changes by the end of the year. But the gathering of superintendents and school board members also gave Granholm an earful, especially after she said lawmakers are "battle weary." "If elected people are weary, my level of sympathy for them is zilch," Catherine Mueller, Grand Rapids school board president, told Granholm. "They ran for these jobs and put themselves in this situation." Granholm appeared before educators...

State lawmakers will soon face large budget deficits again, perhaps as much as $100 billion across the U.S. Here's some free budget-balancing advice: Steer clear of the Michigan model. The Wolverine state is once again set to run out of money, and it is once again poised to raise taxes even as jobs and businesses disappear. In 2007 Governor Jennifer Granholm signed the biggest tax increase in Michigan history, with most of the $1.4 billion coming from business. The personal income tax—which hits nonincorporated small businesses—was raised to 4.2% from 3.95%, and the Michigan business tax levied a surcharge of...

Today isn’t just Labor Day, it’s the last day–forever–of the historic Michigan State Fair. Yes, it’s a sad day in Michigan history. And a sad day for me, given the great family memories I have of attending the State Fair, and given the State’s Muslim-funding priorities. Michigan’s Tax-Funding Priorities: OUT . . . This is the 161st and last year of the State Fair because Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm a/k/a “the Governatrix Gran-HO” and legislators announced they will no longer subsidize the fair, a tribute to Michigan’s largest industry: agriculture. Gran-HO announced that Michigan doesn’t have the money to pick...

Detroit political mess reaching governor?Published: July 1, 2009 at 3:44 PM DETROIT, July 1 (UPI) -- A high-profile Detroit political consultant says the FBI is looking into payments he says he received to not criticize Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Sam Riddle told the Detroit News that the $50,000 he received from the Michigan Democratic Party in 2006 was election-year "hush money" to bolster Granholm's campaign against Republican Dick DeVoss. The newspaper said Wednesday that party officials called the payment a business contract for media consulting, and added that the FBI has not contacted them. Riddle also said agents also wanted...

LANSING, Mich. -- Empty Michigan prisons could become home to hundreds of California inmates if a deal can be struck. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter Monday to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally offering space for some of the inmates California is running out of room to house to Michigan. Download: Ganholm Letter To Schwarzenegger Michigan plans to close two prisons by the end of September. They are the Standish Maximum Correctional facility about 145 miles northwest of Detroit and a medium-security prison in Muskegon, about 45 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. Michigan could save the jobs of about...

As goes Michigan's crumbling economy, so go some once-paved rural roads now being turned back into gravel. About a quarter of the state's county road agencies largely left out of the federal stimulus package, which focuses on highways and other major thoroughfares, say they can't afford some costly repaving projects and have crushed up deteriorating roads. Montcalm County alone estimates it saved nearly $900,000 by converting almost 10 miles of pothole-plagued pavement into gravel this spring. Reverting to gravel on low-traffic roads has been done to some degree for years and long-term savings and maintenance costs vary widely. But it...

(WXYZ) State police are stretched awfully thin these days, with trooper layoffs looming and squad cars being parked to save money. So why is the state moving forward with a plan to build a costly new headquarters that troopers never even asked for? Michael Moorman: I guess I ask the powers-that-be this question: what’s more important, a building, or 100 troopers out there on the road? Because that building isn’t going to respond to Negaunee, it’s not going to respond to Ypsilanti, that building’s not going to be able to respond to Flint when the need and the cry for...

The master of child-killing has two individuals on his short list for the Supreme Court vacancy. One of them is Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. We in Michigan know this nominee all too well. It's no surprise to anyone that the liar-in-chief talks of dialogue and common ground whlie indeed peddling his brand of pure darkness. Granholm is as pro child-killing as one can get. She was at the top of Emily's list during her campaign. She supports homosexual special rights and hate crimes legislation (the exact same thing). She vetoed the ban on partial birth infanticide. She took a suffering...

Not quite a year after defeating a Republican and becoming Michigan’s first new attorney general in nearly four decades, Jennifer M. Granholm, the highest-ranking and most-talked-about Democrat in the state, faced what turned out to be a defining hurdle. It is not clear what kind of legal style Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan would take with her to the Supreme Court. It was 1999, and the state was controlled by Republicans. The Legislature sought to fast-track a measure that would have stripped her office of core powers, including the right to sue the state, represent individuals and have official...

WASHINGTON — A source tells The Associated Press that President Barack Obama is considering California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno and more than five other people as nominees for the Supreme Court. An official familiar with Obama's decision-making said others include Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Appeals Court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Pamela Wood — people who have been mentioned frequently as potential candidates.

WASHINGTON — Will Jennifer Granholm's Canadian birth certificate keep the two-term Michigan governor off the United States Supreme Court? As U.S. President Barack Obama whittles down his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, Granholm has reportedly landed on a White House short list of six candidates under serious consideration for the vacancy being created by the impending retirement of Justice David Souter. But even as buzz around Granholm grows in legal circles, her place of birth — Vancouver, in 1959 — is being cited as a factor that might disqualify her from the job. Several U.S. media outlets have speculated...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm is among those possibly considered to replace Justice David Souter who is planning to retire after nearly two decades on the Supreme Court. President Barack Obama's first pick for the high court is likely to be a liberal-leaning nominee, much like Souter. The White House has been told that Souter will retire in June, when the court finishes its work for the summer, a source familiar with his plans said Thursday night. The retirement is likely to take effect only once a successor is confirmed.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm lashed out at three of the nation’s leading hedge fund companies saying their holding out for more in negotiations with Chrysler were leading the car company down the road towards bankruptcy. “I m strongly urging those who are hedge fund managers to ensure that Chrysler is not forced into bankruptcy because they are holding out,” she said. “The hedge funds, those are the ones that have been previously charged with having made a lot of money by flipping paper, they are holding out as we speak–right now. The future of Chrysler is in the hands of...

Ionia County's unemployment rate for March skyrocketed to its highest level since modern statistics began in 1990. Figures released Thursday by the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DELEG) show the county's jobless rate hit 14.4 percent, which is the highest since the state and federal governments began using their current survey method in 1990 and nearly double the March 2008 rate of 7.6 percent. Ionia County registered an unemployment rate of 18.6 percent in March 1985 but that figure cannot be compared equally to current statistics since it calculated with an outdated formula, according to Tom Krolik,...

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is planning to host a public forum next week to discuss the how to stem the tide that leads nearly half of the Michigan’s college students to seek professional opportunities outside the state within a year of graduating. Granholm wants to reverse that trend and minimize the effects of Michigan’s brain drain, something The Detroit News recently documented in a two-day series. The number of Michigan State University graduates leaving the state increased from 24 percent in 2001 to 49 percent, according to a school study. Fifty-three percent of graduates of the University of Michigan who are...

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan is expanding its tax incentive program for companies developing and making advanced batteries used in hybrid and electric vehicles. Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a bill into law Monday adding $220 million to the program. Granholm earlier this year signed legislation starting the initiative with refundable tax credits worth up to $335 million. Lawmakers are hoping the incentives will help put Michigan in the forefront of battery production for the next generation of electric vehicles. Granholm says Michigan's initiative is more aggressive than any other state's plan.

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Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she won't apologize to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for her crack at last weekend's Gridiron Dinner that the former Republican vice presidential candidate "really set back the cause of hot governors."

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said she won't apologize to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for her crack at last weekend's Gridiron Dinner that the former Republican vice presidential candidate "really set back the cause of hot governors." At the exclusive Washington dinner on Saturday, which was packed with top elected officials, Granholm also used the quip to needle Pennsylvania's governor. "You know where I'm coming from, Ed Rendell," she said.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm had a familiar message today for lawmakers pushing tax cuts: Find a way to pay for them. Advertisement Granholm said she won’t support tax cut proposals, such as a Senate plan to give home buyers a new property tax credit, if they result in less revenue that would force more state cuts. Some lawmakers are pushing for additional property tax cuts, as property values continue to drop around the state. “If there’s a way to pay for it, I’m always willing to look at it,” Granholm told reporters as she toured a statewide high school robotic competition...

Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants lawmakers and other top elected officials to join her in giving back 10 percent of their pay. But it's unlikely more than a handful will oblige. The Democratic governor has returned 5 percent or 10 percent of her $177,000 salary to the state treasury every year since taking office in 2003 as Michigan has struggled with a weak economy and ongoing budget deficits. "This is all about leading by example," Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said Tuesday.

The gas tax proposal advanced by Gov. Jennifer Granholm last week would be the right fuel for Michigan's crumbling roads. The Legislature's job will be to refine her plan -- and make it part of a larger overhaul of transportation spending so that current road funding, which is badly battered, gets the repair it desperately needs. Ms. Granholm's proposal would shift gas taxes from a per-gallon levy to a percentage tax tied to the wholesale price of gasoline. It would work much like the 6 percent state sales tax now collected on gasoline and other items.

Cobo convention center, one of the many aging buildings downtown, is threatening to become the latest tinderbox in resurgent racial hostilities between the mostly black city and its predominantly white suburbs. With calls for self-determination in how the venue operates, members of Detroit's embattled City Council have reopened wounds more than four decades old. (snip) Last week, Council President Monica Conyers, who is black, told a white Teamsters' union official during a contentious meeting on whether to accept the deal that most of the people who work at Cobo during the annual North American International Auto Show "don't look like...

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Governors’ Fight Over Stimulus May Define G.O.P. By ROBERT PEAR and J. DAVID GOODMAN Published: February 22, 2009 WASHINGTON — Republican governors split sharply over the weekend over how to respond to the economic crisis, a debate whose outcome will go a long way toward shaping how the national party redefines itself in the wake of its election defeats of recent years.While the $787 billion stimulus bill might help avert draconian budget cuts by deeply stressed states, Republican governors clashed over just how much of the stimulus money to accept. And governors of both parties said that they did not...

WASHINGTON (AP) — To take federal stimulus money for your state or not to take it. That is the big question for Democratic and Republican governors in town for the National Governor's Association meeting this weekend. Democrats claim those Republican governors who turn down money from the federal stimulus package are "fringe" Republicans eager to score political points. Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm said there are other states that want and need the new money. "We'll take it. We'll take your money." Elaborating in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" with three other governors, Granholm said the issue "is not...

Party on. A new law that passed with unanimous support in the state House and Senate late last month would help bar-crawlers do just that. The bill, which must be signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm before taking effect, allows bars and restaurants that serve alcohol to apply for a special permit that would extend the time when they must stop providing entertainment to 4 a.m. from 2:30 a.m. The bill would not push back the current 2 a.m. cutoff time when bars must stop selling alcohol. The bill's intent is to give businesses the option of remaining open later and...

Michigan's hard-hit retail sector would suffer the double whammy of higher taxes and fees under the governor's budget plan......the state intends to raise upwards of $97 million more from retailers, who have been mired in a years-long slump and just experienced a poor holiday season.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm will announce Tuesday night the development of a new $54 million movie production facility to be built in Pontiac as part of an ambitious and costly plan to build a film business amid the ashes of the auto industry. The studio -- to be built in a shuttered General Motors Corp. facility -- is expected to create about 3,600 new jobs, marking one of the most audacious attempts by a state to attract new industries by offering generous tax incentives. Michigan began offering tax incentives several years ago to lure film makers away from Hollywood. But...

On Thursday, the DELEG released the jobless rates for the state's 83 counties, and the numbers continue to shoot higher and higher. The unemployment rate increased in every county in the state.

Before the election, I wrote two posts (here and here) on likely Democratic nominees to the Supreme Court. It seems an appropriate time for an update. For example, despite my earlier predictions, Elliot Spitzer’s odds now seem lower, and President Obama is unlikely to appoint himself. Equally important, we can learn something from the President’s initial appointments to other jobs in the government. In my opinion, they seem pragmatic and focused on objective qualifications (including academic appointments) and tend less than did those of Clinton and Bush 43 towards friends of the President. The appointments to date have also involved...

In response to the Senate’s failure to pass a $14 billion automaker bailout bill, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., said last week that “It is unacceptable for this un-American, frankly, behavior of these U.S. senators to cause this country to go from a recession into a depression.” Really? Well, let’s talk about un-American behavior, Governor.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm used pugilistic imagery Friday, reacting to Senate Republicans who failed to support a $14 billion bailout for U.S. automakers. "Republican senators have just delivered a fierce slap at three million workers across America," Granholm said in a statement. "Their no vote is an astounding blow," she said. "They have chosen to ignore the livelihood of three million Americans, three million families, and in the process have chosen to drive the American manufacturing industry -- and perhaps the American economy -- into the ground. "A nation without a strong manufacturing sector is a nation without a viable...

Just a few years ago, I took the opportunity to attend special guest appearances by two high-profile political personalities at Syracuse University whose visits were within a few weeks of each other—Ralph Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition and a Republican strategist on the right, and Jocelyn Elders, former surgeon general of the United States during the Clinton administration and a Democrat of decidedly left orientation. Although their addresses and responses to questions that followed illustrated vividly their wide differences of opinion on current issues, that was not the most striking contrast between the two mid-week evening events at...

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Gov. Granholm is near the top of the list to serve as President-elect Obama's Labor Secretary. Taking a look at her competition the Post lists, would make you think she is a lock. Los Angeles Mayor (and noted philanderer) Antonio Villaraigosa and former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, (who has said a number of times he doesn't want the job,) are named along with Granholm.

Organized labor helped elect Barack Obama and now eagerly awaits his promised support for its top priority—a bill that would make it easier to set up union locals. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to create local bargaining units without winning the vote of a majority of workers in a secret ballot. The local unit would be certified if a majority of workers endorsed it by signing an authorization card handed out by union organizers. Fair enough? Not really. The so-called card-check bill would not protect workers and it would not be "free choice." It would strip away...

Regarding Dr. John David's commentary, "Make it Easier to Unionize Workplace": Labor unions certainly have their place in a contemporary American economy, but not at the expense of employee free choice and economic security. Indeed, the Employee Free Choice Act would severely erode the freedom enjoyed by employees for nearly 75 years to make a private, fully-informed decision about whether or not they want a union to represent them. Too often, the losing party in a union election - the company or the union - blames its loss on the opposing party's "coercive and underhanded" tactics. In reality though, the...

Detroit, Mich. — Now we know why Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is on President-elect Barack Obama’s economic policy team. Judging by Obama’s Saturday economic address, he plans to address the nation’s ills with the same inept policies Granholm has championed for the last six years here in Michigan. Granholm and Obama have much in common: They are both young Democratic party protégés, both are charismatic personalities, and both are left-wing, Harvard-educated lawyers with little experience running anything prior to assuming office. Like Granholm, Obama appears to have little grasp of market economics, but prefers showy public-works programs and utopian visions...

Alright so this auto bailout bill is in a holding pattern. But just remember that it doesn't mean it is dead. So here are some facts that should keep you seething ... The Big Three currently pay 85% of union benefits to UAW members ... who aren't even working. Yep. Remember how I told you about the Job Banks for union workers? If a union worker is employed at a plant that closes, the auto makers still pay 85% of their union benefits. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, says that his company must reduce operating costs ... but his...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

The New Plan? Cripple Honda! Save Detroit with Card Check! Eliminating the secret ballot and making it easier to organize U.S. Honda and Toyota workers (and imposing contract terms via binding arbitration) would "level the playing field," says Dem. Congressman Tim Ryan. ... Then when Honda and Toyota responded by importing more cars from abroad, we could have import quotas! Eventually the whole automotive sector could be planned by Congress in conjunction with existing business and labor interest groups. Red State has seen the future and it is corporatist. ...12:21 P.M.

Unions are to blame for the Big Three automakers’ problems, according to a television ad meant to stoke public opposition to organized labor’s number one legislative priority. “Steel, auto, airlines. What do these industries all have in common?” asks the ad sponsored by the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee, which was active in several hotly contested Senate races this year. “Hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and union bosses that helped put them out of business.” The advertisement urges people to fight the Employee Free Choice Act, which unions hope will be taken up quickly by the Democratic Congress and...

President-elect Barack Obama, who co-sponsored the misleadingly titled Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate in 2007, has vowed that the measure, called “Card Check,” will be the law of the land once he’s in office. Given the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, if Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss loses Georgia’s runoff election on Dec. 2, Card Check probably will become law—and that would be terrible news for Americans who want to keep their jobs. Card Check would do away with the present secret ballot process used by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when employees vote on whether to...

There is a curiously dated logic in unions insisting that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which belies the back and forth accusatory rhetoric of intimidation between business and big labor. There are two principal methods for employees to join and command employers to recognize their union's collective bargaining request. First: Company workers can get at least 30 percent of their colleagues to sign petition cards requesting representation, send the cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and have them oversee a secret ballot election. Second: If more than half of the workers sign up for representation, a...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable. "Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol. She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan. The decision averted a likely defeat of...