The only blog focusing on the people & politics of Shiawassee County, Michigan
Dick Ball today voted no on the MESSA busting bill. However he did not support the sales tax expansion to discretionary services.
The tax on services is meant to fill the gap between the income tax and the additional revenue needed to balance the budget.
We’re keeping an eye on the budget fiasco over on BFM.
Last night the Owosso City Council approved the purchase of a new fire truck.
From the Shiawassee forums:
We will be buying a 2007 HME Tower/Ladder. This ladder will be 104′ in height with a platform/bucket.
This new truck will be replacing three old trucks. Gone will be the 1987 Ford Seagraves ladder truck, a 1979 Pierce-GMC pumper truck and a 1966 Mack pumper.Description of the new HME- This truck will have a Cummins 500 hp. diesel engine, Allison automatic transmission, 2000 gallons per minute pump with a 500 gallon poly(plastic) tank, 30 gallon foam tank, 6 man enclosed cab. Preconnected hoses include 3- 1 3/4″ lines and 1- 2 1/2″ line for ground attack. The bucket will have a 1250 gallons per minute adjustable nozzle, 1- 2 1/2″ gated hookup and 1- 1 3/4″ preconnect. This truck will house a 10,000 watt generator. The ladder will have pre-plumbed water and piped air to the bucket. It will have 4 outriggers for ladder operations. This truck will carry the Jaws of Life, a gas powered fan, an electric fan, ventilation saw and various other equipment.
Cost-$660,598 and will be delivered in 270 days.
The OCFD has proposed calling the new truck “Tower 1″
Congratulations Owosso and OCFD!
More details on the forum.
Related: OCFD on the web
A friend of mine works rail cars in Durand, and he just told me that his company has lost their contract on the yard. They’re clearing out on Sept 28. 13 guys will be out of jobs.
The problem was not the weak economy or even Michigan’s shaky tax environment. The problem was that his employer failed to pay Rail America their contracted percentage on the billing. So his company lost the contract.
I’ve listened to my friend talk about his job for a long time. They worked in terrible conditions .. substandard equipment (broken jacks to hold up the cars, inadequate wheel chocks that couldn’t stop or hold the cars when it rained, etc.), lousy weather, etc. And frankly, I thought they were underpaid.
Tough, tough job. And this is what they get, through no fault of their own.
Best wishes to the guys in the yard.
I’m just going to throw this together real quick and then proceed with my life for a while. Sounds crazy, but I really do have one.
Sub only MIRS is reporting that,
Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the administration worked with Dillon’s team to reach compromises with some Republican members. Among those things allegedly offered were judgeships, no-contest elections and more money for school districts in certain legislator’s districts.
See, this is why we do not wait until the last minute to do these things. Now we have to give away the farm. Judgeships? Think those are gonna be liberal judges? This has huge implications.
Why did we wait?
MIRS also reports that the focus of the negotiations are on Dick Ball and Mike Nofs.
First of all, Mike Nofs belongs to SBC, so all you have to do is make SBC happy and Mike Nofs will bend over for you.
Second, Dick Ball is my guy, and this is why I told Leon Drolet that it was stupid for him to bring the pig to my town. Dick Ball does what the Republicans tell him to do. Period.
Another thing that strikes is the short-term mentality of a lot of these Republican House members. For example, Rep Tom Pearce said yesterday, “I’m confused as to why this amendment is before us today. It won’t help us today.” He went on to explain that the House shouldn’t be looking at things that will help in the future.
That’s the kind of thinking that goes on in the House. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
The budget negotiations will continue on into the weekend. Meanwhile I’m going to try to look the other way for the next couple of days while this train wreck runs its course.
So you may have seen Leon Drolet’s pink pig come through Shiawassee?
Leon & co. are threatening to recall Dick Ball (yeah, right) for supporting a tax increase. Well, subscription only Gongwer is giving us some more insight into Leon’s thinking, as to how we can balance the budget without raising taxes:
Mr. Drolet responded that he’d use the tax cuts recommended by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, including having some of the duties now being done by State Police troopers be taken over by county officers to save money in that budget.
Hear that, Shiawassee? The man with the pink pig wants to put the burden on your county.
Good God. Isn’t it enough that Randy Colbry and Margaret McAvoy are a burden on your county? Do we have to take on the burden of state police work too?
Jeesh.
But check out Valde Garcia ..
“We’ve cut. We’ve shifted things around and there’s just no more to do,” Mr. Garcia said. “At some point we’re going to have to pay the piper. Even if we had administrative savings, we wouldn’t come anywhere near saving enough money to fix the budget. I haven’t signed the tax pledge but I also am not a tax raiser but I do have a responsibility to balance the budget by the first of October, how we’re going to do so, I’m not sure.”
(read: “I’ve got to raise taxes but I can’t raise taxes but I have to raise taxes, but I said I wouldn’t raise taxes, so I’m in a pickle”)
Looks like Leon’s got quite a battle on his hands.
Good.
But I’ve got to hand it to Drolet … he makes quite a splash for a guy on a shoestring budget.
I’ve been trying to ignore the 2008 Presidential … sounds terrible, I know. Sorry but I can only care about so much at one time, and right now I’m stuck on the state budget & whatnot. (But Randy Colbry & Margaret McAvoy ought to know that their obscene & undeserved budget increases have not gone unnoticed … )
The 2008 stuff … ugh. We’ve got serious battles right now, in front of us. I don’t want to deal with the Presidency.
But today I hear on the radio that Michelle Obama is out there talking about family & values. *sigh*
Honestly, I wasn’t inclined to support Obama anyway. He has no experience, no relationships in Washington, and although he’s very charismatic and people like him … he’s not going to get anything through Congress. Just my amateur take on it. But I wasn’t opposed to him … I just wasn’t putting out any Obama signs.
Mike Bishop’s New Work Ethic - Ban The Blogs!!! on BFM
Well, now we’ve heard everything.
Thanks to fellow blogger & freelance writer Eric Baerren, we have some more “explanation” on why the Senate Republicans blocked access to BFM. Eric swapped some email with Matt Miner. Miner is Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop’s Chief of Staff and Propaganda Minister. Miner is the one who directed the Secretary of the Senate to block access to our site.
Before we get to Miner’s yip-yap, let me remind you of what he told MIRS yesterday:
“Michiganliberal.com doesn’t matter, they don’t say bad things about us.”
Get that? We matter, because we say bad things about them.
Bishop Accuses BFM Of Crime on BFM
By now you may know that the Michigan Senate has blocked access to BFM. MIRS and Gongwer have reported on this. Mike Bishop’s Chief of Staff, Matt Miner, is the talking head behind all of this. I’d like to respond to a few of his comments on this blog.
First, I’ll address the comments that are only mildly annoying. In subscription only MIRS, he says this:
“I’m not blocking them (blogs) all because some are informational.
Hmm .. informational … BFM isn’t informational? So this stuff doesn’t count?
# Michigan Transportation
# Michigan Civil Rights
# Michigan Economic Development and the MEDC
# The 1967 Detroit Riot
BFM Blocked By Mike Bishop, Michigan Senate Not Allowed To Access, on BFM
Yesterday afternoon I received a few inquiries from the Michigan Senate as to whether BFM was offline.
It was an understandable question; we’ve had some problems here. But this time, the error was a little different — “server timed out” … hmm … the kind of error you get when your site is blocked.
So we did a little digging, and it turns out that Mike Bishop’s chief of Staff, Matt Miner, directed the Secretary of the Senate, Carol Viventi, to block all Michigan Senate computers from accessing bloggingformichigan.com.
(Actually they blocked us by IP, so there are several sites that are blocked. Pesky details)
So I checked on some other sites, to see if all blogs were blocked, or if we were just special.
Spartan Stores Having A Strong Year on BFM
Grand Rapids based Spartan Stores, Inc., has just announced that their Net Earnings for the first quarter of their fiscal year have reached a 6 year high. Spartan is currently operating in FY 2008. The first quarter ended June 23, 2007.
Spartan reports that compared to Q1 of FY 2007, consolidated net sales increased 5.4%, as a result of incremental fuel sales, increased customer count, and increased sales to existing customers. Operating earnings increased 87.4%, and net earnings increased 142.3%.
This is not the fault of BFM, this is an ongoing Soapblox issue. Average downtime is 6.5 hours.
Is this real?
I came across this last night while pricing out ads on mlive. But when I clicked on the link, it took me to all of the Michigan stories except the Granholm story.
Governor Granholm has made several appointments in the last 4-6 weeks, so I suppose it’s possible. I just can’t find any information on it to determine whether it’s true or false. Seems like there’d be some headlines or somethin’.
Alright this is starting to make me mad. We’re paying for an advertising campaign to send traffic to the site, and we have ads on the site. BFM is losing readers and revenue.
Last time BFM was down for nearly 8 hours. I don’t know what the problem is today but hopefully it will be fixed on EDT.
Maybe we could get moved to a more reliable server.
hopefully my moblogging set up still works. Traffic is at a dead stop on west 69 Near wilder rd Many emergency vehicles have passed us But still no Police. i am Sure traffic is very backed up as we have been sitting here 30 Minutes already. people are out of their cars walking around. avoid the area if you Can and it would be great if You could send police to direct traffic and get us Going.
Update 7:05pm - Well I guess moblogging still works. 
We’re home now (sweet!) … they opened up one lane shortly after this posted. I don’t know exactly what happened but it looked ugly. I didn’t go slow to look at the accident, but I did have the video camera running the whole time, so I’ll post some pictures later. Hope everyone there is ok. By the way, approximately 1-2 miles west of the accident are the signs “PRISON AREA DO NOT PICK UP HITCH-HIKERS” … just one little example of why people shouldn’t get out of their cars and walk around when they are stopped on the highway.
I was just chatting with Chetly on another post and it occurred to me that I haven’t been here to cbdc in some time.
Part of my problem is seasonal … I’m always busier during the summer than any other time of year. Part of it is that I have a ton of yard work that I do, but it’s primarily because of the work that I do, and the fact that my workload increases so much at the end of the school year. The workload stays heavy until the beginning of the next.
I didn’t realize it had been so long since I’d been here … it feels like a grave site. I’m going to work on getting myself organized a bit better, so I can pay attention to Shiawassee again. I’ve spent all my time over at BFM, caught up in state level issues. Learned a lot, but I don’t like being away from the county. I’m totally missing the budget process. 
So if I have any readers left at all here, I apologize for just disappearing like that.
Back to my title though, right now I’m in New York having a fine vacation. The trip over was interesting. (We drove) Canadian border officers (don’t know what they’re actually called) are very nice. Ours are nasty. We were in line to get into Canada for about 5 minutes. We looked over to the Canada -> America side, and they were backed up quite a ways. Then we got to the New York entry and we were in line for about 45 minutes. The officer working the booth was really rude when we finally got up there.
Hey, it’s not my fault the towers were attacked. I didn’t elect the idiot president who would rather read that pet goat book than read his daily briefings about Osama Bin Laden. And no, I didn’t bring anything in from Canada. Not the universal health care, not the good roads, not the gay rights, AND I’m neither a Muslim nor a trial lawyer. So let me into my country, you giant A-hole.
Sorry but the guy was a real jerk. (No, I don’t feel safer just because he was mean)
Probably won’t be any better trying to get back into Michigan either.
Well, anyway … Lots of interesting stuff to see around here. I just picked up a camera (apparently it’s possible to get a better picture if you’re not using a cell phone) and we’ll be off to get some pics later.
I got some cellphone pics over the fold, if you want to check them out … (not very good) …
It’d be sweet for BFM to get on the blogroll … just sayin’ …