Dem Hokey Pokey: You take one candidate out, put one henchman in (jail)
By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | CD-09 | Congress | Gary Peters | Joe Knollenberg | Michigan | MoveOn.org | Nancy Skinner — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
And then there was one. You think she wishes she'd never given up that fancy-pants $80,000 a year taxpayer funded gig prepping Daniel Granholm Mulhern for his all-but-dead radio career? I know HE wishes she'd never left. Maybe he wouldn't have flopped that badly if she'd stuck around a little while longer.
Former lefty radio starlet, chief of staff of the money pit that is the Office of the First Gentleman and all-around liberal dream gal Nancy Skinner announced yesterday that she is pulling the plug on her second bid for Congress, clearing the way for yoooooooouuuuuuuur (former) Lottery Commissioner, Gary Peters. Although, in fairness, that particular gig is well in Peters' past. He's been moonlighting as a full-time professor up at Central Michigan University hundreds of miles away from his district these past many months.
Apparently, though, that hasn't stopped him from doing some serious campaign work. According to the Ivory Tower:
"The truth is that it takes enormous resources to beat an incumbent, and given the way our late primary is structured, a costly primary is a gift to Knollenberg", Skinner said. "Gary Peters has been able to amass those resources and support at a level that I have not been able to this point."
But Peters has? He's had the time to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000 for his campaign war chest. That's not easy work. Nancy's been living and breathing the district these past many months and she wasn't able to get a sniff of that kind of action. And believe me, Skinner is much more engaging personally than Gary Peters. The fact that he's raised that much cash is a testament to the amount of time and energy he's put into this race. And yeah, OK, maybe it's a testament to the amount of time and energy organized labor is putting into this race too.
Still... if he's raised that much cash just how much time is he spending on that full-time job up at CMU? I'm sure Dennis Lennox will be asking loud and hard.
So this is good news for Peters, good news for Joe Knollenberg (I'm still convinced, everything else being equal, that Skinner would be a much tougher opponent this November) and good news for MoveOn.org henchman Bruce Fealk. Now he'll only have one lefty candidate to support. After he gets out of jail.
And while Gary Peters adds this particular accomplishment to his trophy case, right next to that nice cushy contractually-full-time-but-not-really-wink-wink-nudge-nudge teaching job the news isn't nearly as good for many of his would-be constituents.
The Associated Press (and everyone else) is reporting that South East Michigan based American Axle, a chief supplier to General Motors, is now facing a full-on UAW strike. Workers took to the picket lines around midnight and have been burning wood in barrels to keep warm.
The strike affects 3,600 workers in metro Detroit and New York. The disagreement with the union looks like a big deal on the one hand (as much as $14 an hour in wage and benefit concessions) but business-as-usual on the other (the UAW's given the same deal before).
"All of the changes we have proposed have been accepted by the UAW in agreements with our competitors in the United States. I have no idea why AAM is being singled out for a different set of economic conditions," Dauch said in a statement.
American Axle Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Dauch said the union should give the company the same wage concessions it has agreed to at other suppliers and automakers.
It seems like only yesterday the UAW was striking at auto assembly plants across the region. I guess they had a little more picket line to get out of their system. One way or another this'll get resolved and folks will go back to work earning less and accumulating fewer benefits. Which is not cool, by the way. But they'll have a job. Which is very cool. Just ask the 7.6% of Michigan's population who can't find one to save their lives.
But hey, it's not all bad news in metro Detroit. Attorney General Mike Cox's office announced late yesterday that they have now recovered some $52 million in back child support over the last few years. That's about $11,000 for each of the nearly 4,600 kids who've finally seen a little support from their deadbeat dads. According to the Detroit News:
Cox's unit goes after fathers who can afford to pay but choose not to do so. It has nabbed high-profile athletes and doctors who owed thousands -- hundreds of thousands in a few cases -- to children they had fathered.
"There are no persons more vulnerable and more deserving of justice in Michigan than our children," Cox said Monday. "We're sending a message that child support is the law, and those who flout the law will be prosecuted."
The size and scope of the problem is pretty mind boggling. There are still over six-hundred-thousand cases in arrears worth nine billion dollars in back payments. Still, the AG's office leads the nation in the recovery of back payments. Nothing to sneeze at. And a godsend for those 4,600 kids they've already helped.