"Low Class" Muskegon Swarms Rep. Huizenga's Office

Vid courtesy of Sean Mullally

My wee boy and I went downtown to join the protest of Bill Huizenga who is known for referring to Muskegon, Michigan as a "Low Class" city. Perhaps we're Low Class because we're the major Democratic stronghold in West Michigan. Or perhaps we're Low Class because Muskegonites WORK with HANDS. The horror.

The boy and I got there early, so to kill some time the wee little boy and I parked at the new splash fountain by the old post office down town. The Alcoa splash fountain between the newly streetscaped Western Avenue downtown and the vast sandlot.

Little history: Back in the 1970's amidst a troubled economy and declining manufacturing base -- Sound familiar? -- Muskegon, Michigan, attempted to reinvent itself -- Sound familiar? -- by turning what was once an open air, standard streetscape with old buildings and shops into a modern, enclosed year-round heated shopping center. A mall! The city literally built a glass roof over the old downtown Muskegon and enclosed it with walls. That worked out fine for a decade or two...but it never made Muskegon the major shopping mecca the planners had expected and by the late 1990s the mall....better known as "downtown Muskegon" was dead. Completely dead.

As it turns out, if you put doors and a lock on your downtown and give it a closing time of 9:00 PM, it has no nightlife. Who could have predicted?

This is running a bit longer than I had hoped...the point is that the mall/downtown completely died and in 2002 and 2003 the city actually bulldozed blocks and blocks of the downtown area...most of it, but for a few of the still functional buildings like the post office, or historic buildings like the old Century Club building.

For years, most of the downtown area has been a sand pit, with developers here and there building new buildings, like the new cullinary arts college.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. To kill time, I brought my youngest boy down to splash around in the new Alcoa childrens' splash fountain, where he ran around with a half dozen other kids. As 4:30 approached we made our way down to US Congressman Bill Huizenga's Muskegon office. He's a Republican. One of the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation's "Magnificent 11" or something like that for his Cut Cut Cut Cut Cut, Slash Slash Slash Slash economic policies.

This is the heir to the MI-2 Pete Hoekstra congressional district. He sort of inherited it because he's part of one of the Dynastic West Michigan families. A set of families whose parents and grandparents made money and build businesses in West Michigan...and whose children feel a sense of entitlement having inherited their position and wealth. Huizenga has proceeded to slash funding for womens' health, for Great Lakes restoration, he voted for the Medicare Killing Ryan plan.

My boy dragged his hopping frog toy down the sidewalk by a green string until we eventually joined a crowd of people outside of Bill Huizenga's Muskegon office. People continued to pour in. By the time my son and I had to leave I had counted over 150 people outside the office yelling "LET US IN! LET US IN! LET US IN!" and "WE NEED JOBS! WE NEED JOBS! WE NEED JOBS!"

Just an average Wednesday in a city with nearly 11% U3 unemployment, ruled by hyperconservative elites.

Crazy West Michigan Conservative May Face Primary from Crazier West Michigan Conservative

Uh oh...looks like there's a potential primary candidate planning a move against Bill Huizenga (MI-2)

Meet State Representative Dave Agema who represents some townships in Ottawa County, Michigan. He's a Republican.

He hates Gay people.

Agema has a new plan for sticking it to the gays and universities. A House panel on Tuesday moved out his bills prohibiting any public entity...from offering domestic partner benefits*

He has proposed bills that would cut state funding by 5% for any university offering benefits for same sex partnerships.

He hates, hates, hates muslims

Rep. Dave Agema (R-Grandville) has taken a break from his obsession with sticking it to gays and is now going after Muslims, but says the folks who disagree with him are the real bigots. He's introduced a bill effectively banning Sharia law in Michigan, which solves a completely made-up problem, as it's not in place anywhere in the state (not even Dearborn).

He put forward plans to divert 80% the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund.

He successfully agitated to get 30,000 students kicked off of Michigan's food assistance.

And he's mad as all heck that Bill Huizenga voted to pass the budget extension.

Now he's got a wart on his fanny giving him the fidgets. Bill Huizenga's seat doesn't look like a bad place to be sitting, apparently. 2012 is going to be a LOT more fun than I imagined.

The Tea Party Recession

I wish I could have been at Obama's speech today in Holland, Michigan. It's just 20 miles to the Sounth of me, but darnit, I had a raptor center I had to bring my kids to, and besides I didn't have a ticket. But It seems Obama's got the snare drum out and he's steadily laying down a beat about the Tea Party Recession. The Tea Party Recession...

...This isn't a man on the defense making talking points to shoot down criticisms of his leadership or economic stewardship.

This is a man going on the offense. He's chiseling his own talking points into the rock slab halls of the media juggernaut. No, no...he does not tell the marble what it will reveal. The marble tells him what it is...what must be revealed.

In this case, it's The Tea Party Recession. The current economic troubles aren't from some years long coke fueled banker manic gambling phase, like our last major crisis. And they're not from uncertainty in the middle east, or from wars, or from jobless figures.

No...the current economic troubles are entirely fabricated from whole cloth, tailored to drag America down until it can be dried and crumbled and smoked in a crack pipe to induce the euphoric illusion of some delusional, fanciful notion of an America that never existed, nor ever should exist.

And the Tea Party is so wonderfully and unabashedly proud of its willingness to drive America into oblivion so they can get their fix, that they are just too easy a target for this new type of framing....the Tea Party Recession. Because, after all, it was the very same Tea Party principles that lead us into the recession in the first place: lower taxes for millionaires and billionaires, deregulation, and a twisted obsession with focusing the entire national dialog on how they intend to change the US Constitution with amendments they want to add and amendments they want to scrap.

In an energetic speech to workers at a Holland, Michigan, hybrid car battery plant helped by government stimulus funds, Obama said the U.S. economy and American workers are capable of being the best in the world, but were being held back by political stalemate in Congress.
"There is nothing wrong with our country. There is something wrong with our politics," Obama declared to applause.
Last week's first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor's "could have been entirely avoided if there had been a willingness to compromise in Congress," the president said, adding: "It didn't happen because we didn't have the capacity to pay our bills. It happened because Washington doesn't have the capacity to come together and get things done."

Bill Huizenga's Surefire Way to Hamstring the US Economy

Went to a town hall tonight to listen to Congressman Pete Hoekstr...er...I mean Bill Huizenga...the new Michigan Second Congressional District Congressman.

It was quite a display of cognitive dissonance.

On one hand, Huizenga lamented how an inability to take on debt hampered the growth potential of the business he inherited. For some reason he couldn't use older equipment as collateral to secure some loans, and that caused a problem.

Apparently a lack of financial fluidity can hamstring business.

But Huizenga doesn't carry that lesson over to the United States, though he tries to shoehorn the country into the same mold as a business.

He has no trouble hamstringing the United States of America with a constitutional amendment to keep a balanced budget.

While small businesses nationwide are suffering because they can't take on the debt they need to grow, Huizenga seeks to deny the United States access to credit as well with a balanced budget amendment.

Perhaps Huizenga's experience with the business world is lacking considering his largest holdings were handed to him.

Anybody who HAS, in fact, started up a business with no safety net would be well aware that debt is a fact of life for many small businesses. That in fact without the ability to secure debt...even large businesses are unable to retool and grow.

A "balanced budget" amendment for a business would mean death to a business as surely as it would mean death to our nation...an inability to invest in growth or start up ventures in both cases leads to stagnation. Even successful start-ups go for years before reaching true profitability. Many operate forever with large debt loads. It was debt that allowed Ford to stay afloat, keep from needing a Federal bailout, and retool its operations to emerge once again as a strong, profitable Michigan car company.

Hell...that's one of the reasons the latest economic crisis has been so bad. Banks aren't lending. Businesses aren't able to take on the debt they need to retool, reinvent, and grow.

Huizenga's economic theories would strangle the US economy forever, just as surely as as stagnant lending has ham-strung the global private sector economy.

Scores of people took to the microphones to ask Bill Huizenga about his intractable stance on raising revenue and his willingness to take from average Americans while asking nothing at all from the wealthy Hizenga, Prince, and DeVos families. To his credit he didn't restrict the questions and he answered ever singe one. But in the process he showed himself to be woefully disconnected from the needs of his district and the needs of his nation.

One very stark point came along when he talked about his insurance policy, which has been provided for him at taxpayer expense for nearly twenty years. There stood an elderly man at the microphone telling Bill Huizenga about the massive bill he received for his wife's surgery. Huizenga's response was a fluid tangent that essentially extolled the virtues of being a Federal or State representative with health insurance while demonizing insurance because he feels that Americans are unaware of the costs of medical care...certainly not the uninsured...certainly not the old man who had initiated the conversation...

and then Huizenga proceeded to talk about how many times he took his children to the emergency room on his tax payer funded health insurance then proceeded to talk about eviscerating...er...I mean "saving" Medicare for future generations, and scrapping our new strides in universal health care.

Frankly, it was all very hard to stomach.

Not a Peep From the Tea Party

To sum up:

Removing tax credits for oil companies: Tax hike.
Removing tax credits for people with children: NOT a tax hike.

And speaking of removing tax credits for people with children and raising Michiganders' taxes...

Wow! It's quite a sight. The outrage, the anger, the united seas of humanity and tri-corn hats protesting Michigan Governor's tax hikes on Michiganders. The Don't Tread on Me flags hoisted high! The....the....complete and utter silence. Seriously...where's the Taxed Enough Already Party?

The TEA Party crowd has been eerily quiet in Michigan considering Republican Governor Rick Snyder just ratcheted up everybody's taxes:

That's not likely to console a taxpaying couple making $55,000 who will lose their homestead credit, deductions for their two kids and will pay a higher tax rate in the future than under the old tax law. That's hardly a unique couple and in 2013 their tax bill will be $739 higher, according to the House Fiscal Agency.

A couple with three children making $110,000, for example, will absorb a tax hit in 2013 of $190, $549 less than the aforementioned couple making half as much.


Or take a retired couple born after 1952 with $53,000 in income and a $4,000 property tax bill. Next year they lose their entire homestead credit and will pay income tax on every dime of their pension. It adds up to a $3,130 tax hit.

Next door a couple, in which the older spouse was born before 1953 but after 1945, also has $48,000 in pension income. And $27,000 in Social Security. They’ll lose some homestead credit as well, but the income tax will apply to only $8,000 of their pension. That's because the first $40,000 is exempted for their year-of-birth group. Their tax increase is $590.

But get this.....these aren't called tax increases.

Why?

Because the State is merely getting rid of Tax Credits and Tax Exemptions.

- Homestead Tax Credit
- Child Tax Credit
- Pension exemptions

Michigan conservatives use their removal of tax credits as a technicality to say they never raised taxes.

Which is interesting considering that when Obama suggests removing tax credits to raise Federal revenue in the Debt Ceiling talks, conservatives use THAT as a way to say Obama is going to raise taxes.

If there was consistency, I might actually think Republican leaders have a shred of sincerity.