Quote of the Day

"Everybody should go out and buy a gun. I recommend an Uzi. If you don't like guns, then I suggest you buy a pair of guard dogs, preferably a pit bull and a Rottweiler."

- L. Brooks Patterson, County Executive of Oakland County in a Detroit News opinion piece.

Sheer Brilliance

Putting criminals back out on the streets? Brilliant! Hey, if you can't figure out a way to cut your prison expenses, just put the prisoners out on the street. Such stunning leadership!

Cox slams Granholm prison plan
The Detroit News

State Attorney General Mike Cox and a coalition of law enforcement and county government officials on Monday denounced Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposal to cut state prison costs by reducing some criminal penalties and sending more prisoners to county jails.

Saying the plan was dangerous and wrong-headed, Cox said it was based on mistaken and misleading information. People in prison, even those serving time for relatively minor or nonviolent convictions, often have violent backgrounds, he said. And virtually all criminals have victims.

The proposals, part of the governor's budget-balancing plan, would reduce the number of inmates by about 3,300 over the next three years, according to prison officials. Cox and his colleagues said that is too many.

"Public safety is the first responsibility of government," Cox said. "It shouldn't be the first thing cut."

"Salesperson for the State"

How can Jennifer Granholm say she's "a really good salesperson for the state" when she's failed so grievously to sell the state even to companies who are here? Ooohh, Google added a few hundred high-turnover commission-based salespeople here in Michigan. That will go a long way to offset Kmart, Dow, and Comerica moving out thousands of high pay salaried positions.

She seems to be basing her image on this whole "salesperson for the state" idea, which is garbage because she's done such a horrible job of selling the state. From The Detroit Free Press on June 30:

Governor to head overseas

With a new, more business-friendly tax awaiting her signature, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Friday that she'll soon travel overseas to sell Michigan as a good place to do business.

She said an August trade mission to undisclosed countries will showcase the state, especially renewable energy industries that she says can help fuel Michigan's economic recovery.

"I'm a really good salesperson for this state," Granholm told the Free Press. She's led past trade missions to Germany and Japan.

Granholm also called on lawmakers to voluntarily return 5% of their salaries -- like she does -- as a good-faith gesture to resolve the state's budget crisis. Salaries for the governor ($177,000 annually) and lawmakers ($79,650) are set every two years by an independent commission and cannot be changed by the Legislature.

Granholm plans to release prisoners to save $$

A bipartisan plan in the Michigan Legislature seems to be trying to release inmates to try to save around a hundred million dollars from the budget. I'm all in favor of saving money, but the fact remains that if a criminal is locked up in prison, that criminal isn't out committing more crimes. With the ricitivism rate as high as it is, does cutting sentences really mean we're going to save money when the vast majority of those released will wind up back in the system once again after an expensive trial?

No end for jammed prisons
Gov's inmate release plan won't solve budget and space crisis
Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News

DETROIT - Despite Gov. Jennifer Granholm's plan to release up to 5,500 inmates to shave $92 million of the state's $686 million deficit, experts say the money and bed space crisis will continue as long as some 30 percent of the inmate population -- or 16,000 prisoners -- remains locked up even though they are eligible for parole.

"We need fundamental reforms to reduce the prison population that was driven up in the last 20 years -- not by crime but by policy choices the state made," said Barbara Levine, executive director of the Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending, a prison spending policy advocacy group.

Deputy Corrections Director Dennis Schrantz recently predicted that without the release of the 5,500 inmates, the system will run out of beds by September. And a recent Pew Foundation study predicts Michigan's prison population will increase 11 percent by 2011.

Inmate Ross Hayes, for example, has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars for his upkeep. He was first eligible for parole 23 years ago.

Hayes was 16 in 1974 and high on drugs and alcohol when he stabbed and killed an 89-year-old homeowner who returned home unexpectedly and surprised him during a burglary.

A psychologist said Hayes had the emotional maturity of an adolescent, and a probate judge reluctantly ordered Hayes tried as an adult. His lawyer advised him to plead guilty to second-degree murder in return for a life sentence with a chance for parole after 10 years.

Hayes is now 49 and serving his 32nd year in prison. He has an excellent prison record and has earned a GED and two associate's degrees. He converted to Christianity and got married in 1998.

In 2001, Dale Daverman, great-nephew of the victim, was surprised to discover that Hayes was still in prison and visited him. Since then, Daverman has been an advocate for Hayes' release.

"I am absolutely convinced that Ross Hayes is sincere and has remorse for what he did. My father, brother, and I feel Ross has paid his debt to society," Daverman wrote the parole board's chairman that year.

But Hayes has repeatedly been turned down for parole.

Both parties want reform

In a statement to The Detroit News, Granholm said sweeping reforms she is proposing will reduce prison population while keeping residents safe.

"(The plan) calls for revisions to Michigan's sentencing guidelines, increased use of community-based sanctions for appropriate offenders, reinvestment of funding for local criminal justice services, expansion of the bipartisan prisoner re-entry program and paroling more prisoners into this successful program that has shown a double-digit improvement on recidivism," the governor said.

Legislative changes in sentencing guidelines in the 1990s produced "truth in sentencing" requiring prisoners to serve all their time behind bars. The change also wiped out halfway houses and community facilities used to ease prisoners back into society before parole.

The state's financial crisis is creating a new bipartisan spirit for reform. On March 29, state Rep. Paul Condino, D-Southfield, introduced a bill aimed at strengthening and spelling out parole guidelines.

It would also make the board accountable for following those guidelines to grant parole.

The bill sets guidelines for parole and makes parole decisions transparent and subject to appeal. It would also require the board to account for exceptions it makes when refusing parole.

Condino could not be reached for comment.

State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said he, too, has convened a subcommittee to take up prison reform of parole.

"Having practiced law in that area. I have often wondered why we got rid of the appeal process in the parole system, because it does take away the discretion of the court and gives full authority to the parole board, which has become a very political entity. I am all in favor of bringing back discretion to that process," Bishop said.

"Any way we can make the system better, we ought to be looking at it. Instead of just talking about commutation of prisoners, you've got to fix the system before you can just implode it and walk away."

The Corrections Department and the parole board are already seeing positive results by taking a less rigid approach to parole involving a group of 4,153 nonviolent non-sex offenders previously rejected for parole.

Parole board more flexible

In January 2005, the board began taking second looks at the group who would not have been considered for parole again for 12 to 24 months.

That closer look resulted in parole for 2,076, according to a Corrections Department memo dated Jan.8.

CAPPS and a State Bar of Michigan group that deals with prison issues believe other reforms need to go no further than a return to policies abandoned in 1992. At that time, Gov. John Engler pushed legislative changes that abolished a supervisory parole commissions as well as the civil service parole board and replaced it with political appointees.

CAPPS calculates that adoption of Condino's bill and three other reforms could reduce the prison population to pre-1922 levels of 42,000.

The three reforms are:

Capping the time some of the 3,700 technical parole violators are serving in prison for violations that did not involve a new crime.

Reinstate good time credits similar to what inmates earn in federal and other state prisons, which would cut average sentences by 15 percent at a savings of $100 million.

Rescind a board policy that treats parolable life sentences as natural like sentences. Hayes and 800 other inmates fall into this group.

State Rep. Rick Jones, R-Oneida, who was Eaton County sheriff for 33 years and a jail administrator for five years, supports these recommendations.

"We are incarcerating people longer than the states around us at a cost of millions of dollars," Jones said.

"Put Michigan First"

Below is an editorial on the FRONT PAGE of the Detroit Free Press yesterday.

It may just seem to be a naive, simplistic, "let's just get ANYTHING" done statement which completely ignores the entire differences between the two sides - it does lead me to wonder why the two sides can't at least work together to bridge part of the gap. Why can't the two sides get together and piece together a set of spending cuts which will at least get the government part of the way to their goals? If they can chop between one-third and one-half of the budget, then it will at least shore up how drastic the cuts have to be later. There has to be SOMETHING the two sides can agree on. Getting a partial package in place immediately is a critical first step.

Put Michigan first - now
April 1, 2007

Two crises grip Michigan: economic and leadership.

The forces behind the first are, in part, global and national. There are no such excuses for lack of leadership. Governor Jennifer Granholm and her political counterweight, state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, have done next to nothing to resolve a budget mess that creates a great uncertainty in business, schools, and local governments.

This stalemate threatens to wreck Michigan's credit rating, saddle the state with a reputation for fiscal buffoonery and suck away more tax dollars to higher interest payments.

Granholm and Bishop have thrown competing plans on the table and declared the other's dead. That's not leadership. That's gamesmanship, and the situation in Michigan is too critical for games.

Now the governor is running around to her constituent groups telling them to send letters and e-mails to the Legislature backing her position. She's imposing small, overdue spending controls and announcing plans to shut down state government next month. House Republicans are leading a petition drive against tax increases, and the Senate is taking the next two weeks off.

For whom are these people working? Not the taxpayers of Michigan, that's for sure.

The Detroit Free Press rarely in the last century has given front-page space to its editorial opinions. But when people ask us, "What on earth is going on in Lansing?" we feel compelled to say in this prominent way "nothing much" except partisan hissing.

It's shameful.

After some small-change cuts and accounting gimmicks, the state still has a $686-million budget shortfall for a fiscal year with only six months to go. The longer it takes to fix that, the more drastic the solutions and the more damage done to the state's already deteriorating reputation among investors.

Whether it's the spending cuts Republicans demand or combined cuts and tax increases as the governor proposes, it has to be something. Right now, folks, we have nothing.

A basic negotiating tactic: Find one common principle and build on it with hard give-and-take that's considered successful if everybody leaves the table a little unhappy. Why isn't this happening in the Capitol?

How bad must things get before this state's so-called leaders realize whom they signed on to work for -- and lead?

Put Michigan First

Below is an editorial on the FRONT PAGE of the Detroit Free Press yesterday.

It may just seem to be a naive, simplistic, "let's just get ANYTHING done" statement which completely ignores the differences between the two sides - it does lead me to wonder why the two sides can't at least work together to bridge part of the gap. Why can't the two sides get together and piece together a set of spending cuts which will at least get the government part of the way to their goals? If they can chop between 1/3 and 1/2 of the deficit off the whole then it will at least shore up how drastic the cuts have to be later. There has to be SOMETHING the two sides can agree on. Getting a partial package in place immediately is a critical first step.

Put Michigan first - now
April 1, 2007

Two crises grip Michigan: economic and leadership.

The forces behind the first are, in part, global and national. There are no such excuses for lack of leadership. Gov. Jenifer Granholm and her political counterweight, state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, have done next to nothing to resolve a budget mess that creates great uncertainty in business, schools and local government.

This stalemate threatens to wreck Michigan's credit rating, saddle the state with a reputation for fiscal buffoonery and suck away more tax dollars to higher interest payments.

Granholm and Bishop have thrown competing plans on the table and declared the other's dead. That's not leadership. That's gamesmanship, and the situation in Michigan is too critical for games.

Now the governor is running around t her constituent groups telling them to send letters and e-mails to the Legislature backing her position. She's imposing small, overdue spending controls and announcing plans to shut down state government next month. House Republicans are leading a petition drive against tax increases, and the Senate is taking the next two weeks off.

For whom are these people working? Not the taxpayers of Michigan, that's for sure.

The Detroit Free Press rarely in the last century has given front-page space to its editorial opinions. But when people ask us, "What on earth is going on in Lansing?" we feel compelled to say in this prominent way "nothing much" except for partisan hissing.

It's shameful.

After some small-change cuts and accounting gimmicks, the state still has a $686-million budget shortfall for a fiscal year with only six months to go. The longer it takes to fix that, the more drastic the solutions and the more damage done to the state's already deteriorating reputation among investors.

Whether it's the spending cuts Republicans demand or combined cuts and tax increases as the governor proposes, it has to be something. Right now, folks, we have nothing.

A basic negotiating tactic: Find one common principle and build on it with a hard give-and-take that's considered successful if everybody leaves the table a little unhappy. Why isn't this happening in the Capitol?

How bad must things get before this state's so-called leaders realize whom they signed on to work for -- and lead?

Special Bonus: Granholm's plan for "improving" the economy

Governor Granholm released her tax plan yesterday. Basically, she's in favor of slashing taxes for the manufacturing industry and imposing taxes on service companies, particularly on financial service companies. Mainly, this is because people are worried about outsourcing and hate insurance companies and banks.

Here, I thought Granholm was trying to diversify the economy. If this is her intent, why would she be attacking the consulting and financial service companies which are growing at a great pace and are one of the few shining points in the economy? Sure, we need to do something to help manufacturing. However, is cutting their taxes by 1 percentage point (albeit, an 85% reduction) going to offset the harm to the economy by imposing a new tax on the service industries? Nearly all new jobs in this state are service industry jobs. Service industry jobs are things that Americans can do better and more cheaply than foreign competitors and thus are where we're strongest. Why make it tougher for these companies to succeed while trying to bolster a manufacturing sector in which we simply can't compete? We should be focusing on things we're doing well, not tearing them down. Only by focusing on what we do well can we hope to turn around Michigan's economy.

However, Democratic strategies are more concerned about making things 'even' then about sound economic policy. It's still amazing how these people think they're capable of running the economy.