Tag: Gretchen Whitmer

Tuesday Evening Watch Michigan

 

Like many of you, I have been reading the polling data — and I am confused . . . in part because the pollsters are no longer able to gather the data requisite for a representative sample (thanks to the abandonment of land lines for cell phones), in part because nearly all of the so-called “independent” pollsters are partisan manipulators. So, I will have to wait for the results on Tuesday night.

I will be watching Michigan, as you should. It is a purple state. Trump won it in 2016. Biden was awarded it in 2020. The Democrats’ gruesome threesome is up for re-election: our governor, our attorney general, and our secretary of state. All three are female. All three regard abortion as a sacrament and care very little about anything else. They represent better than any other candidates in the country a certain propensity within the Democratic Party. There is also a proposition on the ballot to make abortion a constitutional right for all individuals (including your fourteen-year-old daughter, if you have one). It would also legitimate a sex-change operation for one of your children without your permission. Bodily autonomy — that’s the ticket.

The Deep State Loses Again

 

Rough week for the DOJ. First, a January 6th defendant is acquitted on the legal principle that you can’t convict someone of trespassing if you let them in in the first place, and now a jury has acquitted two defendants and deadlocked on two more in the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot. Specifically, the kidnapping plot that was instigated by FBI undercover agents and paid informants. One of the FBI Agents involved in the case was subsequently arrested on domestic abuse charges.  

The FBI’s conduct in this case was egregious. The FBI and its informants instigated the plot, moved to entrap the participants, and tried to destroy exculpatory evidence

Byron York is in for Jim. Today, Greg and Byron are glad to see New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo losing some of his longtime donors. They also react to a Buzzfeed story about the FBI’s infiltrating militia groups in Michigan leading up to the kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. But did the FBI only foil the plot or did it push militia members to pursue the idea in the first place? And they reveal how congressional Democrats are planning to pursue an amnesty policy through the massive spending bill they hope to pass this year.

Join Jim and Greg as they welcome the declining approval numbers for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and one poll even has her trailing her likely GOP opponent. They also hammer President Biden for not joining three European nations in condemning Iran’s latest nuclear actions and even trying to ease up on sanctions against Tehran. And they roll their eyes as the Biden administration plans to go door-to-door to encourage more Americans to get vaccinated.

Join Jim and Greg as they serve up three crazy martinis. First, they look at Michigan’s terrible COVID numbers and discuss why Gov. Whitmer is asking but not mandating that high schools suspend sports and in-person classes. They also groan as President Biden sets up his special commission to consider changes to the Supreme Court, including the number of justices and how long they should be able to serve. And they’re glad to see all the real problems in the world must be solved since CNN is busy declaring Asian font to be racist.

Join Jim and Greg as they close the week with three very crazy martinis! They begin with the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Whitmer immediately blaming it all on President Trump. They also hammer Nancy Pelosi for trying to give Congress the power to declare a president medically unfit to stay in office. And they get a kick out of Democrat Cal Cunningham trying to blame his sex scandals on North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.

DOJ Wants to Know: Democrat Governors’ Orders Killing Elderly

 

justice and COVID-19The Department of Justice is demanding detailed information from a group of four governors who may have wrongly caused the death of the elderly and vulnerable living in nursing homes. The Department of Justice is giving the governors two weeks to answer a set of pointed questions. 

Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Department of Justice Requesting Data From Governors of States that Issued COVID-19 Orders that May Have Resulted in Deaths of Elderly Nursing Home Residents

Data will help inform whether the Department of Justice will initiate investigations under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) regarding New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan’s response to COVID-19 in public nursing homes

Despotism Comes to Michigan

 

In early Rome, there was an office called the dictatorship. There was a resort to this institution only in an emergency when the senate and the two consuls were persuaded that the latter were not up to the challenge and that the crisis could not be handled unless there was a suspension of the laws that ordinarily limited the power of magistrates. The dictator’s scope was restricted. He was appointed for a particular purpose – and for that purpose only. He was supposed to resign when the emergency passed. Under no circumstances could he remain in office longer than six months, and when his authority lapsed he was subject to judgment. Necessity was the sole justification for any breach of the law.

The office fell into abeyance after the Second Punic War. It was revived, however, in a different form by Sulla who held the office for a handful of years after Rome’s first civil war, and it was revived again in yet another form by Julius Caesar, who had himself named dictator for life. During the American Revolution, a proposal was floated for including a provision for dictatorship within the Virginia constitution, and Thomas Jefferson fiercely attacked the idea in his Notes on the State of Virginia.

[Member Post]

 

Haven’t these people heard of closed captioning?  It’s all the rage these days.  This image is from one of my governor’s (Gretchen Whitmer) infamous recent executive order broadcasts.  Normally, her striking red lipstick would capture my complete attention and I’d be riveted to her compelling words.  But, lately, every time she speaks, there is this […]

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Michigan Republicans No Longer Supine?

 

To the unsuspecting glance, Michigan’s Republican Party might seem to be a force. After all, it controls both houses in the state legislature, and it has done so ever since the shenanigans that took place early in Barack Obama’s first term catapulted Republicans nationwide into a dominant position within most of the states. It is nonetheless an empty shell, little more than a front for the chamber of commerce, and during the period of its ascendancy, it has achieved next to nothing – apart from shifting taxes from corporations to retirees, raising the gas tax, and making Michigan a right-to-work state.

The party’s fecklessness has something to do with the defects of the state’s most recent Republican governor. But his unwillingness to cut expenditures, reduce taxes, and introduce reforms can best be explained as a consequence of the party’s debility. Rick Snyder is the Michael Bloomberg of Michigan. Before he sought the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nomination, he was registered as an independent. He became a Republican only because he recognized that the party itself had no substance and could easily be seized by a wealthy candidate able to fund his own campaign.

Thus, as was predictable, while in office, once he got the legislature to shift the tax burden from the state’s corporations to its senior citizens, he was reluctant to do anything else of any significance. It was only when the unions ignored his attempts to reach an accord with them and fiercely entered the fray to prevent his re-election that Snyder, by way of revenge, was willing to sign off on the Republicans’ right-to-work initiative.

Gretchen Whitmer Doubles Down

 

Last week, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer doubled down, extending the Michigan lockdown until mid-May. The new executive order is in modest ways an improvement on its immediate predecessors, which I described two weeks ago in a post entitled “The Wicked Witch of the Midwest.” One can now operate a motorboat; buy paint for one’s house and seeds for one’s garden; and even travel to a second home. In other ways, however, ”the temporary requirement” that everyone “suspend activities that are not necessary to sustain or protect life” is pure idiocy. It still rules out elective surgery while allowing abortion – presumably because, in the world of Gretchen Whitmer and today’s feminists, the not-yet-born are not really alive. Our governor has even had the effrontery to defend abortion as “life-enhancing.” In Michigan (and in some other states), some must die so that others can enjoy themselves.

Given what we knew and what we did not know, when the lockdowns began, it may have made sense for a brief time to systematically minimize human contact. The Wuhan coronavirus is exceedingly contagious, and we then possessed no herd immunity. On the Diamond Princess, virtually everyone was exposed, 18% of those on the cruise contracted the virus, and nearly 10% of those who did contract it died. In Wuhan, China and in northern Italy, the epidemic overwhelmed the health system – and there was reason to fear that the like might happen here. The aim of the lockdowns was not to prevent the spread of the virus. Given how easily it could be contracted and the absence of a vaccine, it was not even possible to impede it for long. Our aim was modest: to delay its onset and slow down the spread in the hope that our hospitals and health professionals could cope.

We know a bit more now. We know that most of those who contract the disease are asymptomatic; that the asymptomatic are, nonetheless, contagious; and that those most apt to die are elderly individuals and others with underlying health conditions. In Michigan, the mean age of those who die is 76 and the average age is 74.5. In Italy, where half of the population is over 47, I read that 99% of those who died suffered from other comorbidities. In New York, 94% suffered from at least one comorbidity and 88% suffered from more than one. Those who go on cruises on ships such as the Diamond Princess are, as one wag put it, “the newly wed and the nearly dead.” It was the presence of a great many old folks on the voyage that explains the high mortality rate.

The Curious Case of ‘Gary B’

 

In Gary B. v. Whitmer, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit last week held that the state of Michigan owed a constitutional duty to ensure that students in the worst-performing public and charter schools in Detroit receive “a basic minimum education, meaning one that provides a chance at foundational literacy.” The logic behind this theory is straightforward enough. Illiterate young people have no ability to participate in democratic deliberations and no skills to support themselves or their families. And society overall is made worse off with fewer able participants to join a well-functioning economy.

In the majority opinion, Judge Eric Clay detailed the bankruptcy of Detroit’s public school system, whose dismal educational performance, he wrote, was driven by “the absence of qualified teachers, crumbling facilities, and insufficient materials.” He then correctly concluded that the state has general oversight and control over the educational system and is thus a proper constitutional target to remedy the bankrupt and derelict Detroit school system. The case was decided on the pleadings, which let the majority define its right to a minimum education without getting into the details of how best to implement the right in practice. One major problem with the decision is its inability to define the content of this positive right to government support. Full disclosure: Judge Eric Murphy, who dissented on these grounds, is my friend and former student.

Gary B. relies on Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, which enables federal courts to provide a remedy against any Governor or other state officials who have brought about “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” That Section covers violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that no person should be deprived of the protection of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor denied the equal protection of the laws.

The Wicked Witch of the Midwest

 

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been in the news a fair amount recently. A Democrat with ample experience in both the state house and the state senate, she was elected to the gubernatorial chair by a comfortable margin in 2018 on the promise that she would “fix the damned roads.” To that end, she promptly proposed raising the gas tax by 45 cents a gallon, which earned her opprobrium throughout the state and caused the members of her own party in the Michigan legislature to distance themselves from her.

This misstep notwithstanding, Whitmer is viewed as a star by the Democratic party establishment. Perhaps because she was elected governor in a Midwestern state that Donald Trump won in 2016 and that the Democrats must take in November if they are to wrest the presidency from the man they love to hate, she was chosen in February to reply to his State of the Nation Address, and Joe Biden even made her co-chair of his campaign.

All of this has gone to Whitmer’s head. She now aspires to be her party’s vice-presidential nominee in November, and she is reportedly on Biden’s shortlist – which explains her desperate, clumsy, recent attempt to pick a quarrel with the President. The lady, whom Trump in his inimitable way calls Half-Wit Mer, is desperate to be in the limelight.

MI Governor Loses ‘Consent of the Governed’

 
Picture of Gov. Gretchen Whitmore (D-MI)

Gov. Gretchen Whitmore (D-MI)

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s handling of the COVID-19 lockdown has stood out as one of the most severe and arbitrary in the US. Michiganders are unable to purchase gardening supplies but lottery tickets are fine. They can travel to Walmart but not to their cabins in the countryside. They can paddle a canoe but can’t ride a jet ski.

Join Jim and Greg as they cheer the recovery of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his heartfelt thanks to those who saved his life. They also slam Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for implementing insane restrictions like not being able to visit someone else’s home and not being able to buy plants, flowers, seeds, or even child car seats. And they unload on the New York Times for dismissing a woman’s sexual assault claim against Joe Biden by saying it could not find any other pattern of abuse except for the women who already accused him of hugs, kisses, and touching that made them uncomfortable.