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If you missed it, this weekend’s Off The Record broadcast
on Public TV stations (video available here) was a raucous battle of the bloggers between liberals and
conservatives.
Host Tim Skubick was uncharacteristically hands-off in
his approach as the four
guests on the panel loudly debated Proposal 1, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and
Rick Snyder.
The four commentators were: Tony Trupiano, a liberal Internet
radio host on Blog Talk Radio network; Dennis Lennox, a conservative columnist
for The (Mount Pleasant) Morning Sun and a Republican activist; Brandon Hall of
the rightward West Michigan Politics blog; and Eric Baerren of
Michiganliberal.com.
Much of the disjointed discussion consisted of a battle
between Trupiano and Lennox. Sitting just inches away from each other, their
debate nearly turned into a shouting match at times as Lennox goaded Trupiano
with scathing characterizations of liberals.
Baerren also ignited the free-for-all with this simple
description of Cruz: “A clown.” When Skubick pressed the four to explain their views on the Prop 1 road funding plan, Hall conceded that he would not support any kind of tax hike to fund road improvements. Lennox guardedly admitted that he could support a straightforward sales tax increase for roads only – which somehow put him in agreement with Baerren.
Trupiano tried his hardest to argue that Prop 1, for all its flaws, represents a better choice for fixing the roads than any Plan B the Legislature would devise sometime in the future if the May 5 ballot proposal fails.
Republicans control all branches of government in Lansing, and have since January 2011.
ReplyDeleteWe're now into a fifth straight year of zero solutions to fix and maintain Michigan's roads and infrastructure.
These two things are related.
Proposal 1 -- and the 10 tie-barred laws-in-waiting (all with P.A. numbers, signed by Gov. Snyder) that depend on its passage -- is the only thing Lansing Republicans could come up with.
And that only happened because term-limited Legislators with one foot out the door (led by former House Speaker Jase Bolger and former Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville) finally found a small measure of courage to stand up to their rabid anti-tax GOP base -- people like Brandon Hall.
Even then, the GOP "solution" was to force Michigan voters to do the dirty work of generating revenue to fund future road repairs. The Democrats' only contribution was in trying to minimize the regressive nature of the new fuel tax and increased sales tax; Bolger, Richardville and Snyder accepted their help so they could claim the fig-leaf of bipartisanship before turning over the Legislature to the new leadership.
A new Republican leadership that has done everything in their power to undermine Proposal 1, exposing Rick Snyder as a lame duck just months after his reelection.
Win or lose on 5 May, Republicans OWN this debacle.