Well cheer up, friends. It doesn't. The folks who paid for that billboard? They're lying. And not just a little white lie. Not political spin. Not an exaggeration. They didn't jump to a conclusion. They didn't make a mistake. They didn't take things a step further than they should have. They are lying. Through their teeth. And they're hoping no one notices.
The advertisements are being paid for by a group called the Progressive Women's Alliance and their lies about Michigan's Supreme Court are being advanced and promoted by Rich Robinson at the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. Robinson, you'll remember, is the hypocrite who travels the state under a self-styled cloak of non-partisanship, screaming from the mountain tops about transparency in political giving while refusing to divulge the names of the donors who make his work possible.
PWA laid the groundwork for their dishonest smear campaign during the summer when they hosted Democratic Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Kelly and Mr. Robinson himself at a forum where they "addressed why the Michigan Supreme Court has fallen in recent years from its previous ranking among the top five state Supreme Courts in the nation to the bottom of the pile, 50th of 50 states, according to a new University of Chicago study."
Robinson is now traveling the state repeating the lie for the League of Women Voters as a part of a faux "non-partisan" road show but unlike his Michigan Campaign Finance Network, we know a little bit about who is actually funding these events. More on that in a moment, but first, let's unpack Robinson's lies.
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Bert Copple: Living Room Politics
Michigan Taxes Too Much: It's Just Your Money
Republican Michigander: You Don't Win if You Don't Show Up
Wayne County Taxpayers: Redford Invades Dearborn Heights
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Right Michigan readers are smart cookies and I don't have to tell any of you that a statement like that is unprecedented. Vice Presidential nominees do not question the man at the top of the ticket and they certainly don't do it in front of a television camera. But there isn't much that's typical about Sarah Palin. Is it any wonder this woman has given such an incredible shot in the arm to so many conservatives across the nation?
Now never mind the strategy and the war room politics that goes into a decision to yank your campaign operations out of a battleground state. When John McCain's campaign team made that decision last week, they were making, in their minds, a careful decision on resource allocation and they were playing the odds but they didn't calculate the human toll here in the Great Lakes State.
Michigan is hurting. Breaking news, right? I won't run through all of the same old sad statistics. Eventually they can wear a brother down and make you want to bury your head under a pillow while you cry out for the pain to stop. But no matter how loud you cry or how badly you wish things would change they just keep getting worse. Today it's rotten news out of Detroit area school districts.
We learned over the weekend that the Detroit Public Schools may or may not have made 300 layoffs in an effort to solve their $400+ million budget deficit. Folks like bus attendants and part-time custodians.
Things may actually be worse (!!!) over in the Wayne-Westland district where students this morning are waking up not knowing whether or not they'll even have class. The MEA says teachers aren't showing up for school. They'll be breaking the law instead, leaving well over ten-thousand kids, literally, in the streets.
Read on...
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As a gaggle of Rep. Stupak's Democrat cohorts were posturing and preening before the major television network cameras on Sept. 29th and wailing their siren song to woo voters away from the Republican ticket after a failed vote on the financial bail out balderdash, Mr. Stupak was craftily composing words to a siren song of his own.
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