Broke Ass Benton Harbor

End of Democracy, or the End of the Party?

In Benton Harbor, Michigan, a state-appointed emergency financial manager has suspended the decision-making powers of cash-strapped Benton Harbor officials.

The order emergency financial manager Joseph Harris means that Benton Harbor officials can only call meetings to order, adjourn them and approve minutes of meetings. They've been stripped of any actual power.

Harris' action is likely the first since Gov. Rick Snyder signed a law in March granting more powers to emergency managers the Treasury Department appoints to take over distressed schools and communities. (Which is probably unconstitutional - to the Michigan Constitution)

One elected Benton Harbor official, City Commissioner Bryan Joseph, said he wasn't upset. He said he has watched financial mismanagement for decades, and a desire to address that disarray was one of the reasons he ran for election in 2008.

Joseph said the city has struggled with a contentious trash hauling contract, lawsuits related to that contract, new competition for water services and city officials who sometimes clashed so fiercely meetings dragged on for hours.

"I have seen for more than 30 years the mismanagement of funds and personnel in the city," he said. "Infighting has been going on for decades."

But Harris' action drew a strong rebuke from Mark Gaffney, the president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, which represents administrative workers and others. Why? Because all the city union contracts are now null and void.

"This is sad news for democracy in Michigan," he said. "With the stripping of all power of duly elected officials in Benton Harbor ... we can now see the true nature of the emergency manager system."

The new powers of emergency managers include setting aside collective bargaining. Harris' order comes only days before a scheduled training session for prospective emergency managers and turnaround experts.

Emergency managers are in place at Detroit Public Schools and in the cities of Benton Harbor, Ecorse and Pontiac. I wonder if the company they work for is called Omni Consumer Products?

Harris, a former chief financial officer for the city of Detroit, is a certified public accountant with 10 years of local government management experience.

Well, it doesn't take an accountant to figure out that Benton Harbor is broke.

Let's just see if the place is worth fixing.

Mosque Attack Thwarted

American Terrorist Tries to Blow Up one of the USA's biggest mosques with 700 Muslims in it

About 700 people were attending a funeral inside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, the largest mosque in metro Detroit, when Dearborn police arrived to arrest a man in a car in the parking lot.

He had driven to Michigan from California and reportedly was overheard in a bar making threatening comments about Muslims or Arabs. His car was loaded with large, illegal fireworks, police said. Now, Roger Stockham, 63, is jailed on charges that include making a false report or threat of terrorism.

"He's very dangerous," said Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad.

Yes, a car full of M80's. I'm not an expert - but it sounds more like he was going to put on a fireworks display and cause some mayhem - not exactly bring down the building kind of event BUT - let's remember that this is an American intent on blowing up other Americans.

We all need to take a minute to give credit where credit is due, to summarize the modern law-enforcement techniques and agencies that made it possible to catch him:

• Illegal wiretaps
• Naked X-Ray machines
• Waterboarding, "stress positions," and other types of torture
• TSA crotch-grabbing of minors
  
• Color-coded terror alerts
• Internet spying/surveillance/data harvesting
• Racial/ethnic/religious profiling
• Any and all the actions and involvement from the FBI, the DHS, or the TSA and Mega-Plex Homeland Security

Oh, wait. That's the list of things that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH catching him! This was a crusty old man talking at a bar!

That said, you haven't seen this information, but I wonder that if this was the other way around - a Muslim with a car full of fireworks outside of a mega-church - would the coverage been different? Would that be buried even further?

States back to Territories?

Is California the next Michigan?

“I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy,” said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. “I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status.” said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance.

Hey, Mike, why don't you just give the whole damn thing back to Mexico and save a couple steps?

"We're facing a cliff in 2011 when stimulus dollars run out," said Mitchell Bean, director of the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. "There is not an end in sight, even in recovery."

According to the Wall Street Journal, there were no bankruptcy options for the States, and the legislature chose to cut back sharply on education and health care to fill the gap. Mr. Genest already predicts the 2011 shortfall will outpace the projected $7 billion gap. It is a smaller deficit than this year's gap, but the choices will be more difficult because so many cuts have already been made.

Mr. Genest estimated that, eventually, 40% of the state's budget would go to the state Medicaid program, 40% to education, 10% to debt service and 6% to retiree medical services and pension—leaving little left for anything else, such as the state's corrections system. Read crime wave about to be unleashed.

Mr. Bean described a similarly depressing scenario for Michigan, which could end the recession with 25% fewer jobs than in June 2000 and a total of one million job losses. Michigan's unemployment rate in September was 15.3%.

So in other words, get ready for Bail-Out Two: State Side Hubbaloo.

Mitt Takes Mich

Wow, a total surprise to anyone who didn't know his father was a Michigan governor!... like myself. Oops! Only learned that one last night. Had I known that ahead of time - I would have predicted a Romney win. I did suggest that the Michigan Mormon community would be coming out to support him. Well, there you go. At least OneF never predicted any winners. So, that's got to be worth more points for me?

The Republicans are now totally split with Huckabee taking Iowa, McCain taking the most delegates from New Hampshire, and now Mitt with Mich. It's an interesting slap fest waiting to break out.

So now is the time for Rudy to swoop in and start making noise - or he really will be out of it. Rudy is still leading in the NATIONAL polls as the front runner. That is why I'm standing by my prediction of a Rudy nomination. Doesn't mean I'm right, I'm just looking at the numbers - much like how I knew the Cubs wouldn't win any of their games they bought in the playoffs.

Michigan for Romney?

Will McCain take Michigan tonight?

Will Democrats, after realizing that their vote really doesn't count, step out and scribble in Huckabee just to screw with the three or four Republicans that still live in their state?

Much thought is going into a state that has made itself irrelevant in '08, due to the decision to move their primary up to today. However, the ongoing prater of Michigan being Mitt Romney's last stand is absolute nonsense. Again, the pundits have heard it somewhere and are repeating it because they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

The picture of Mitt waving made me think he was doing that Michigan Map out of his hand - then I realized I was dyslexic. Or maybe he is? Either way, he ain't wavin' bye-bye just yet.

Mitt's got tons of money, and he has Beaver Island Mormons campaigning for him.

Oh, what's that? Never heard of Beaver Island? It's a great tale, it starts with an assassination - someone James J. Strang declared himself a monarch - demanded that all his female subjects wear bloomers - and it ends, predictably, with another assassination.

Anyway, Mitt's not done, even if he places second in Michigan.

And please remember - as this has been lost for the last two weeks - New Hampshire was not a winner take all state. Obama has the same number of delegates as Hillary. She "won" the popular vote. Obama is still winning.

And at the end of it all, it's not even a state worth worrying about. Florida will be a state to worry about. Guliani's lead there is evaporating.

Prediction - McCain, Romney, Huckabee
Democrats - everyone loses.

I wanna Vote!

If you are in Michigan today, please vote for Dennis Kucinich. Of the front runners, only Hillary is on the ticket. Explanation here.

I think this is a good idea and wish I had thought of it before now. Here are five reasons (if you are a Michiganian) Dennis deserves some love and your vote.

• Paid for the New Hampshire recount out of his own pocket. He knows that he will still get less than 2% of the vote. But there were discrepancies and he wants to get to the bottom of it. He is for fair elections.
  
  
• He is the man we want at the convention starting some trouble with over 30 delegates. That would be awesome. It would be like the old conventions. Hillary and Barack would have to listen and respond to Dennis and put some items he feels strongly about on the platform. It's old school politics and he is the man that would play this card properly.
  
  
• Chris Matthews head would fucking explode. If Dennis won, I would watch that loud mouth for a whole week.
  
  
• His wife is smoking hot and I could sleep better tonight if I knew he was getting some primary winner nookie. He deserves it for getting UFO questions during the debate when everyone else got health care questions. And the moderator seemed to think that unidentified meant alien. His wife is also twelve feet tall and has a British accent. I am thinking of running for President for the chicks.
  
  
• No matter how much fun it seems to vote for Mitt Romney to mess up the Republican's election, you would have only yourself to blame if Mittmentum carried him to the White House. If Dennis goes all the way to the White House on Kucinentum I can promise you four years of good things getting done. The war would be over, the lobbyist would be kicked out of Washington, there would be fair elections, and a wide variety of other things established politicians do not want done. Maybe their heads would fucking explode. Could happen

Vote well, Michigan; vote Kucinich.

Wolverines Mounted; Irish Stung

Oh, how I would love to sling a few zingers at the mighty Michigan Maze and Blew regarding their opening week (or, in this case, opening weak) football loss to Appalachian State. Yes, Appalachian State-- two-time defending champions of Division I-AA, which is NCAA code for "not a Big School." This lowly-regarded institute of higher learning is located in Boone, North Carolina, and if you don't know where that is... well, consult your atlas. Even I am at a stymied loss to describe just how far off the beaten path Boone, NC is. The school's official web site describes its location as being, "nestled at the base of Howard Knob."

Tsk, tsk, Howard. Given the political climate right now, do you really think it's wise to have anyone nestling near your knob?

Still, Application State does enroll more than 13,000 undergrads, which makes it far bigger than the school I got thrown out of and is one minor reason why I can't cackle like an over-the-top Halloween witch and say that the Michigan Wussy-rines were beaten off the line by "Cupcake State" or "Southeast Toothless Tech." Alas...

The main reason I can't make fun of the Michigan football team is that the team I root for, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, got their we're-not-ready-for-some-football [donkeys] royally stomped by the ramblin' wreck of Georgia Tech.

Why do I mention this? Well, partly just to take my lumps-- much like I will have to sack up and eat crow when the Baseball season crosses the finish line (dammit!), but there's another reason...

Late in the first half of Saturday's game, with the Irish well on their way to getting their shalelees shellacked, the latest specimen of dishwater-blonde eye-candy with a phallic symbol in her hand* accosted former Notre Dame quarterback Joe Theisman (THIGHS-man). Theisman, of course, strumpet that he is, felt no compunction whatsoever about shooting his mouth off --right there in front of "Touchdown Jesus" and everybody!-- and proving why he has been... um, shall we say, "relieved" ...of his duties as an analyst on ESPN's coverage of Monday Night Football. He blamed the unfolding debacle on Notre Dame's starting quarterback, Demetrius Jones.

Ahem.

Hey, Joe... Are you really that worried that if you don't criticize a quarterback every chance you get, people will think you're being too soft on them? Why not put the blame where it belongs: On the offensive line. True, Demetrius Jones didn't look good, but neither would you if you were wearing navy blue and you had three or four guys in white jerseys hanging off your shoulder pads an eye-blink after every snap. Blocking is part of football, too, Joe.

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* P.S.... Since our site is called "Blasphemes," I should probably just tell anyone whose back is up over my "latest specimen of dishwater-blonde eye-candy with a phallic symbol in her hand" comment to bugger off. But I won't. An angry young woman named Maggie Estep once said, "I don't have anything against men... just stupid men." Likewise, I don't have anything against female sideline reporters... just vacuous ones.

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P.P.S.... Bud "The Strumpet" Selig must go.