Governor Granholm Issues Layoff Notices to 35,000 State Workers: State Shutdown as of Monday at 12:01AM

Our elected state government in Lansing is failing to come to agreement on Michigan's 2007-2008 budget, and Governor Granholm has begun to take steps to shut down the state government. Under Michigan's constitution, the state cannot spend one cent unless a balanced budget is in place.

The state isn't running out of money; it simply will not have the authority to spend anything.

Democrats and Republicans each control one house in the state legislature and they've adopted contradicting bills on what to tax, and what to cut in order to get rid of a forecasted $1.8 billion shortfall.

Once this crisis is resolved, I think the voters of Michigan need new leadership in the state legislature. This is going to be quite embarrassing if the government needs to shut down. John Schneider over at the Lansing State Journal called this situation a "slow motion train wreck" and he's absolutely right.

Editorials in many Michigan newspapers are calling for this stupidity to end and for both sides to compromise. I agree. These people need to get off their fat lazy asses and MOVE IT!

You have two friggin' hours!

Iran Considers Nuclear Matter a Closed Political Topic; Wants Discussion to Focus on Legal and Technical Aspects

Iran's President had his fifteen minutes in front of world leaders on Tuesday, and he let everyone who was listening have it.

"It" was a rambling speech against the West and against the Security Council. He declared the political aspect of the debate against Iran's nuclear program "closed" and wanted the discussion to focused on technical and legal issues.

Fat chance.

Iran does have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear technology as every nation does, but the "peaceful" part is being questioned in Iran's case, as it has threatened to blow Israel off the map and is shipping bombs across their border into Iraq. Their posture is anything but peaceful.

Iran has every intention of developing nuclear weapons. His blatant lies at Columbia University and the fact that he denied it is all the proof we need. Iran wants blood, not peace.

Government About to Hit Debt Limit Again; Bush Administration to Ask for an Additional $950 Billion on Credit Limit

Here we go again with the debt limit. Not content with the $9 trillion plus debt ceiling, the Bush Administration requested that Congress extend the ceiling by an additional $950 billion.

That's quite ENOUGH!

This government needs to make more than it spends and lower it's debt load to a more manageable level before it's too late. $10 trillion is too much debt. It must spend our taxpayer money much more conservatively.

The trade deficit is of particular concern; as is the devaluation of the U.S. dollar against other major world currencies. I do think the brakes should be put on free trade agreements until the damage from NAFTA and CAFTA are fully assessed. Whoever said that the North American Free Trade Agreement would create a sucking sound from south of our border has definitely been proven correct.

But of more concern is this government's willingness to outspend how much it makes. Income must always exceed expenses. I think that the next President is going to have to make major cuts across the board in order to get the country's budget back into order.

And Congress is going to have to stop earmarking as they're contributing more than their fair share to the debt load with their peanut storage facilities and bridges to nowhere. The days of blank checks from the government for useless projects must become a thing of the past if the country's financial situation is to recover quickly from the financial disaster we're in.

Iranian President Looked Like a Two-Bit Dictator at Columbia University: Debate Over His Appearance Likely to Continue

When I heard that Columbia University had invited Iran's two-bit terrorist thug/President to speak before his address to the U.N. General Assembly, I was not happy. How could a university invite a murderer and a terrorist to it's campus to speak, yet allow an on-stage assault on a Minuteman speaker last year?

And then they took the trouble to invite him back for a speech this year, then dis-invited him.

Columbia's double-standard on speakers is astonishing. They'd rather invite someone whose troops and bombs have killed HUNDREDS of American troops in Iraq and THOUSANDS of Iraqi civilians. This is deeply offensive.

The aggressive posturing of Columbia's president in his introduction of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the subsequent question & answer session (which was amusing and showed who this man really is--a terrorist, a liar, a Holocaust denier and a total idiot) did not lessen the offense that Columbia committed when they invited this man to speak in the first place.

Columbia's statement about being open to free speech by all is a quaint lie as well. They stood by as Columbia students charged the stage while the Minuteman was giving his speech last year; all they did was show Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist the door.

Hypocrisy is alive and well at Columbia.

Michigan Government STILL Without a Budget; 10 Days to Government Shutdown

I think serious attention needs to be paid to what's happening with our Michigan government and how it's being run.

They've been working on a budget for eight months, and they've wasted time on unnecessary political posturing, delays, and outright refusal to budge on their established positions to score points on the other side.

In ten more days, this government WILL shut down if they don't have their act together and a balanced budget. Do we need to chain the state senators and representatives to their desks and lock the doors to get these people to move, or what?

OJ Simpson Trial is Already a Media Circus: It's Only Going to Get Worse

The media is already in a feeding frenzy over the OJ Simpson arrest, and it's going to get a lot worse. It'll probably be twice as bad as his double-murder trial; we're going to get bombarded with news about OJ around the clock for months to come.

My only hope is that the judge isn't as inept as the judge in Simpson's first trial. At least it won't be him, or that crybaby judge in Florida who handled the custody case for Anna Nicole Smith's baby. Hopefully the judge who gets this case will put a gag order on everyone involved in the case so that the trial isn't played out in the media any more than it already has.

And he (or she) keeps the lawyers in their places and under control. And keeps the TV cameras out of the courtroom; that'll keep everyone grounded and focused.

OJ Simpson Arrested for Armed Robbery: He's Not Getting Off This Time

OJ Simpson appears to have returned to his pre-football street hood roots, participating in a number of small crimes over the last ten years, before participating in an act of armed robbery in Las Vegas over the weekend.

He gets $4.3 million a year from the NFL for his retirement, yet he finds it necessary to rob someone with some help from his compatriots at gunpoint over a few trivial pieces of sports memorabilia? How small he's become. Why didn't he buy the things back?

He's not going to get away with it this time, as he did for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in 1994-1995. He needs to be stopped and that overinflated ego of his needs to be deflated a bit. And then he needs to be permanently forgotten. He craves the attention he's getting, and is betting that he'll be able to spit at the criminal justice system again.

This man is OUT of his mind.

And it might be pointed out that if he had put $3 million of that $4.3 million pension toward paying off the civil judgment against him in the matter of the deaths of his two victims starting in 1996, he'd have paid it off last year. But he's declined to do even that, thumbing his nose up at the system.

France Tells the World to Prepare for War Against Iran: Believes Force Will Be Required to Stop Iran's Renegade Nuclear Program

France's foreign minister told the world that a war with Iran may be necessary to put a stop to Iran's nuclear program once and for all.

Oh, really?

And how many troops, aircraft and ships will France and the rest of the world be contributing toward fighting this war? And is France willing to duke it out with Russia and China in the U.N. Security Council? And how many minesweepers will it send to the Persian Gulf to help clear the minefields that Iran is sure to deploy if fighting does break out?

Let France and its allies lead the fight against Iran, and we'll support them for a change instead of us carrying the workload and begging the world for help. We have two wars to wrap up before we mix it up with Iran.

Is Alan Greenspan Running for Something?

With former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's new book about to be released on Tuesday, some of the media outlets--most notably CNN and 60 Minutes--obtained copies early and were quoting passages from the new book almost incessantly. The only thing that got him out of the headlines were the antics and arrest of OJ Simpson in Las Vegas.

Some of the most-quotes passages (quoted, I might add, with the same kind of reverence shown to the Bible during Sunday services) included Greenspan's opinion that the Iraq War was largely over oil, about how the Republicans had sacrificed principles for power, and that the Republicans deserved to lose as badly as they did in the last election.

This sounds like Greenspan is running for something at the same time that he's promoting his book. I don't think this is the end of this story.

People Must Use Caution on Social Networking Sites: Stuff Posted Can Come Back and Bite the User HARD

People do not understand how much damage they can do to their careers and reputations with postings and photos on such social networking sites as Myspace and FaceBook. Employers, universities and interviewers troll these sites, looking for what their current/prospective employees and students are posting, and how they are presenting themselves to the entire world.

As a general rule, if it looks or feels inappropriate to post to one of these kinds of sites, then it probably is. Profiles should be squeaky clean with the person's best foot forward. Scandalous postings and photos should be avoided at all costs. Some examples of people getting in trouble because of what they post:

• An education student at a university was denied a degree because the school administrators found pictures of her on her profile, which showed her partying. They felt the photo was unprofessional and gave her a degree in English but declined to give her the teaching certificate.
  
  
• A man was fired from his job as a school bus driver and a volunteer firefighter after he and his wife posted nude photos of him on Myspace.
  
  
• A Wal-Mart employee was fired for joking on his Myspace blog that he was going to bomb the store. He was subsequently denied unemployment because he made a threat. Duh!!
  
  
• A judge in Las Vegas was fired for his Myspace profile. He wrote that one of his interests was to "break his foot off in a prosecutor's ass" which made his impartiality during trials questionable.
  
  
• A sheriff's deputy in Florida(?) was fired for posting his bad habits on Myspace and his joking about putting people in jail.
  
  
• Another deputy was fired for posting racially and sexually inappropriate stuff on his Myspace profile.
  

There are hundreds of cases like the ones above.

People can put what they want on their profiles, but they only have themselves to blame if their photos and postings come around and bite them in the ass when they least expect it.

Use caution when using a social networking site.

Soldiers Want Politicians to Embed With Them in Iraq: Now That's a GREAT Idea

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the beginning of something new inside U.S. military units who are engaged in combat: reporters embedded with the troops. They traveled with the troops, ate and slept next to them in the dirt, ate the dirt when the troops did, and shared the danger. And they reported as combat was ongoing.

Now some soldiers want Congress to spend some time in the dirt with them, too. Having members of Congress embed with the U.S. military??! That's a GREAT idea. This should be put into effect immediately with a six-month rotation (with no going home for Thanksgiving or Christmas either--their units will be overseas--they should be too.)

A firmer understanding of what the military is going through would be beneficial to Congress. Of course, this will NEVER happen. But it's an interesting idea.

Alternative Fuels Need to be Made of Something that Doesn't Pull Food or Ingredients Out of the Agricultural Sector: Corn Experience Shows Us Why

Many nations have decided (in the last couple of years) to ramp up their production of corn-based ethanol. The interest in getting in on a lucrative alternative fuel market was overwhelming to those nations, but the effort has caused some spin-off problems.

People in Mexico began noticing that food products made of corn (like tortillas) began to rise dramatically; protests broke out across Mexico. Similar things happened in other countries across the world; the loudmouth leader of communist Venezuela was braying like an elephant about it.

In this country, it had an effect on the price of milk, cheeses, corn products and other products: soap and ice cream are experiencing shortages of corn-based ingredients, which may actually cause shortages as well as price increases.

That shouldn't be happening, but it is. There's only so much land in temperate zones that are dedicated solely to corn production. Any diversion of corn away from the food processing market will cause consumer prices to rise at the grocery stores. That isn't a good idea.

Brazil seems to have the best solution for ethanol production: they're using sugar cane, which doesn't have as huge an impact on grocery prices as corn does.

This is a major stumbling block in the search for an alternative fuel. I don't know what the solution is.

Frank Talk on New Orleans: Should We Rebuild a City That's Below Sea Level So It Can Be Flooded Again?

Now that the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has come and gone, we really need to reconsider whether we should rebuild New Orleans--a city that sits below sea level and is sinking.

Not a lot of progress has been made in rebuilding New Orleans as it was. Funding has stalled, and many people from the city have decided to resettle where they are. It's safe to say that the recovery hasn't gone well. And before too much money is spent on the sinkhole, a few design changes should be considered.

There's still 120,000 buildings in New Orleans that have been condemned and need to be taken down. 80% of the city was flooded and mold has a firm foothold in those places. The clean-up should be finished as those buildings are health and safety hazards.

I don't think taxpayer dollars should be used to move people back into the bulls-eye. We'll be right back to two years ago with a flooded sinkhole the next time a major hurricane targets the area.

Homeowners Need to insure Their Houses to Full Replacement Value: Too Many Don't and Won't Have Enough Insurance Money to Rebuild if Disaster Strikes

One of the biggest frustrations that I had when working at an insurance agency was arguing with policyholders over how much their homes were worth versus how much it would cost to rebuild their homes if they were totally destroyed. The two numbers are definitely not the same.

And that may come as a surprise to some.

The cost of building materials increases many times faster than a property's retail value does. As we've seen from the collapsed housing market, a house may not sell for what it's worth at all. But the cost of the materials used to build the house and the labor involved doesn't drop in price. Building material costs have increased anywhere from 3-6% a year.

Labor costs have also increased exponentially as well. That is figured into replacement cost.

Unfortunately, insuring the house to it's full replacement value usually costs more in premiums, which most people don't like. That's understandable. But if the house is protected to replacement value, that's a well-protected asset.

Let's play with some numbers:

You own a house that is appraised at $50,000. Your insurance company informs you that it would cost you $175,000 to put it back up if it were left in ruins by fire or by a tornado.

You tell the insurance company that they're full of it and tell them you want your home insured to $50,000. Bad move. The insurance agent either does what you want them to over their explicit objections (real bad move) or tells you to go find another insurance agency. For this instance, we'll assume that the agent does what you want and writes the policy for $50,000.

Some months later, a tornado blows through and severely damages your house. One inner wall is left standing; everything else is rubble.

You start to rebuild and the insurance company sends a check for $50,000. The builder tells you that another $150,000 is needed to complete the construction. Uh oh.

You storm over to your insurance company and ask--"Where's the rest of my ^#$^# money??!" and the agent tells you "You insured your house to $50,000. I warned you. Sorry." That's when the screaming really starts.

Replacement coverage would cover the entire amount with minimal difficulty.

This scenario is playing out in my area right now. A tornado blew through our area on August 24th and took out two dozen homes. Some of the victims have been on the news, saying that they didn't have home owners insurance, or didn't have enough coverage to rebuild. That's really sad.

Others have already had their homes demolished and are preparing to rebuild on the same spot, though the neighborhood is still in ruins.

It may cost more in the short run, but people should protect their homes with replacement value on their insurance policies.

Michigan is Without a Budget and Less Than Three Weeks Away from a Government Shutdown: They Need to Get Moving

There's a complicated fight going on in Lansing over the state budget, and there's less than three weeks before Michigan's government runs out of money and a shutdown of the state occurs.

The battle looks like this:

Governor Granholm vs. the Republicans
Democrats vs. Republicans and vice versa in both houses
House vs. Senate

The first two fights mentioned above were expected; the third popped up unexpectedly. The state senate is controlled by the GOP; the state house is under control of the Democrats. Each house is challenging the other to take action first to cut out a $1.8 billion budget shortfall for next year.

They've been at it for seven months now.

Enough of the posturing, people. Fix the budget, NOW.

Michigan Moves It's Primary Election to January 15th; This is Unwise, But Does Challenge a Double-Standard That's Unfair

Michigan joined Florida in defying the double-standard that both parties have in allowing four states to vote earlier than all others.

I am not in agreement with this decision.

I do agree that it does challenge an unfair double-standard that needs to be changed. But at what cost? Michigan will be punished and it's voters in both parties will be disenfranchised by a corrupt political system that favors four states over all others. And the primaries are already too early.

The Bush vs. Kerry campaign of 2004 was pure agony. It went on far too long and was incredibly expensive for both parties to stage. As with how 2008 will be, 2004's primary season ended way too early. And we were stuck with two candidates--one who flip-flopped like a fish out of water, and the other with a huge anchor tied around his neck with "Iraq" stenciled on it.

Does anyone really want a loooooong campaign in '08?

FEMA Should be Separate from Homeland Security; DHS is Too Clunky

This is a return to an old theme, but since it doesn't appear to be happening as some have suggested, I'm going to revisit it.

Two years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I wrote that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needed to be separated from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as DHS was overbuilt and too unwieldy to move quickly in a disaster. And since that time, Congress has held hearings, FEMA people have resigned, and a lot of window dressing has taken place.

It's not enough.

FEMA should be an independent agency that can move it's assets around at will without going through several layers of DHS bureaucracy to get permission to do so. This was the primary reason for the slowness of FEMA to get into position prior to Katrina and to mobilize once the hurricane roared ashore and swamped New Orleans. The left hand had no idea what the right hand was doing.

The only reason that FEMA should be subordinate to DHS is in the event of a terrorist-related disaster. FEMA needs it's own budget, it's own chain of command, and a direct line to the White House with a cabinet-level secretary.

This needs to happen and soon.