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By RightMichigan.com Posted in Michigan | Spotlight Blogs | State Politics — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

While the state Capitol remains under a "Yellow Alert," watching and waiting for ten Democrats to take a stand one way or another on Andy Dillon's $1.2 billion tax hike scheme there are reminders of the stakes all over the state.

The sheer insanity of a massive tax hike sans a single penny's worth of reforms is reinforced by the updated numbers coming out of the housing market.  Michigan now ranks sixth worst nationally in terms of home foreclosures.

Not a nice number.  But the pain and the trouble in that figure really jumps out at you when you dig a little deeper.  Not only are there now nearly 16,000 properties sitting on the market in one stage or another of foreclosure, that breaks out to a jump of 11% over the month of July and a staggering 126% leap from this time a year ago.  

A one-hundred-twenty-six percent increase in foreclosures since the heat of the last campaign year.  

Talk about trending in the wrong direction.  Not that we didn't see the writing on the wall last fall.  Those of us who didn't cover our eyes and pretend the state's problems were just going to go away, anyways.  

Read on . . .

And the foreclosure rate doesn't tell the whole story.  When you add 16,000 properties to the housing market at bargain basement prices you're going to depress that housing market.  And when that market is already depressed?  Well, home prices plummet.  Nowhere has that been more painful than in metro Detroit and Wayne County.

According to the Detroit News:

In Wayne County, the drop has been a staggering 35.6 percent.

The impact of falling home prices is widespread. For homeowners without equity, it can mean being "upside down" on their mortgages, owing more than their home is worth. For home sellers in that position, it means bringing cash to the closing just to pay off the loan. For sellers who saw their homes as retirement nest eggs, it means a lower return on their investment. And dwindling values means many homeowners can no longer borrow against their equity for major home repairs or purchases.

Paying the bank just to sell your house.  Making no cash on your investments.  Dwindling retirement nest eggs.  I know, lets just raise taxes an extra billion to create a social safety net for all the homeowners who're losing their shirt in Jennifer Granholm's housing market.

(End sarcasm)

As if that wasn't enough, another day passed in the negotiations between the UAW and their "strike target," GM.  And still no deal.  Plants across the country are preparing for a possible strike as things get testy at the bargaining table.  

Remember, they're working on borrowed time right now, with the union's contract expiring last Friday.  The FREEP reports:

"The mood has clearly gone sour. ... A lot of the friction is whether or not there will be adequate job guarantees coming out of this," Shaiken said. "It has bogged down just by the time it has taken in a way that both sides would have preferred to avoid."

People familiar with the talks say the parties are negotiating the size of GM's retiree health care obligation, what percentage of that obligation GM would pay into a trust, what assets it would use to support the trust, over what period the company would contribute assets and whether the automaker would provide further funding if health care costs grew faster than expected.

...The new GM contract would cover about 73,000 active UAW members and affect an additional 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses. It also would likely be used as a guide for new contracts for UAW workers at Chrysler and Ford, where talks continue, though on a more subdued scale.

Then after GM there's still Ford and Chryler, though those are expected to fall quickly into place after the initial agreement.

Nothing like the threat of 73,000 people walking out of work to kick-start an economy, is there?

Almost makes the stakes back in Lansing seem less important until you remember that if the Democrats succeed in their mad dash to shutdown the government a lot more than 73,000 people are going to feel it.  

Speaking of the situation in Lansing, there was an interesting quote in today's AP coverage of the ongoing crisis:

"We know what the problems are," said Sen. Mike Prusi, D-Ishpeming. "We need to get busy and do the work that we were sent to Lansing to do here. ... This doesn't really solve the problems we were sent here to confront. It merely shoves them down the road..."

Now go ahead and read that again then skip back down here.  Got it?  Doesn't it sound for all the world like he's talking to the ten House Democrats who've refused to vote on the House Democrat tax hike?  We need to get busy.  Do the work we were sent to Lansing to do.  Someone's actions don't solve the problems we have to confront.  They're only putting off solutions.  

But hold your horses.  Before you run off and fire an email to the good Senator thanking him for taking a principled stand I'm conscience bound to give you the context.  

Prusi wasn't encouraging the ten yellow-dog-Democrats to actually take a stand.  He was moaning and complaining about the Senate's passage of a continuation budget.  And you know those continuation budgets... evil things... as the AP points out:

According to the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, the state has to make nearly $260 million in payments on Oct. 1, including money for Medicaid weekly payrolls, community mental health payments, adoption subsidy payrolls, housing and utility allowances and debt service payments.

Shameful things to fund in the face of House Democrat intransigence.  Just shameful.  Not sure how anyone who voted for that can live with themselves.  

Don't get me wrong, though.  I'm not a fan of the continuation budget concept.  I'd very much like this thing to be resolved one way or the other.  It's true that we can't keep shoving our problems off another month, then another month, then another month.  Kinda makes a guy wish Dillon had meant it when he promised all those months ago to roll up his sleeves to get to work on the budget immediately.

So much for that... we're twelve days from a shutdown and he can't even get all of his members to vote!