Boxing Matty

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Joel

By Joel Thurtell

Gov. Snyder, consider yourself small game.

Matty Moroun thinks you’re a rabbit dumb enough to be lured into one of his kill zones.

Matty’s in for a surprise.

I think you’re a fox.

When I was a kid in the fifties, you couldn’t turn a TV set on without catching one or the other of the “western” soap operas.

There was this wonderful cowboy metaphor.

“Box canyon.”

Wikipedia says a “box canyon” is ” a small ravine or canyon with steep walls on three sides, allowing access and egress only through the mouth of the canyon. Box canyons were frequently used in the American West as convenient corrals, with their entrances fenced. They were also used as kill sites for wild game, which could be driven into the confined space and killed.”

A box canyon is the Michigan Legislature.

You can walk in through the open side.

But the other three sides are lined with elected representatives ignoring their constituencies so they can do the will of the man who showered them with money.

Matty Moroun.

The Michigan Legislature is a slaughterhouse for governors proposing any idea that runs counter to Matty’s will.

Gov. Snyder wants to build a new bridge between the United States and Canada.

Matty doesn’t want a new bridge — unless he controls it.

A new bridge under government control would ruin Matty’s little monopoly, the dilapidated Ambassador Bridge, right out of business.

So Matty bought himself a Legislature.

It is Matty’s version of the cowboy’s box canyon.

Only Matty has so much control over the Legislature that he doesn’t even need to bait the governor into his trap.

Last year, his hirelings — aka legislators — murdered the governor’s bridge proposal in committee.

The guv never even made it to the floor of the canyon.

Now, for some time, it’s been evident that the governor is looking for a way to avoid walking into Matty’s legislative box canyon.

Matty’s making ready a second cul de sac.

He wants to entice the guv into the trap of Michigan popular opinion.

Matty thinks public opinion is like the Legislature.

For sale.

According to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, this year Matty has spent $1.6 million and last year $6 million on TV lies against the new bridge.

Money talks and liars win in the box canyon of public opinion.

All this posturing is meant to pave the way to a landslide win for Matty’s proposed referendum on the public bridge in November.

The referendum is another of Matty’s box canyons.

All the governor has to do is not set foot in Matty’s kill sites.

If Matty were truly interested in democratic legitimacy, he’d be pushing for votes across Canada and the United States, since all Canadians and Americans have an interest in this project.

But a win for Matty across two nations would be far more expensive and far less certain — definitely not a box canyon.

All these little box canyons of Matty’s add up to one huge strategic blunder.

Matty has turned Michigan into a box canyon, and he’s driving himself into his own trap.

In kowtowing to Matty, the Michigan Legislature has written itself out of the script.

Michigan Legislature.

November referendum.

Irrelevant.

Powerful interests in Michigan and Ontario are driving this. So are the the federal governments of the United States and Canada.

Two nations against one billionaire.

Watch your step, Matty — you’re stumbling into your own box.

 

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See no evil: CABS and media

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Joel

By Joel Thurtell

Thanks to Kevin Dayton of the Dayton Public Policy Institute for noticing my recent columns about the evils of Capital Appreciation Bonds.

He covered the May 11, 2012 meeting of California’s League of Bond Oversight Committees annual conference in Sacramento, where there was a presentation featuring bad news CABs.

As near as I can tell, he’s a one-man think tank who goes to public meetings when he thinks important matters will be discussed without REAL media coverage.

Like me, he’s a blogger. We don’t have fancy business cards with the logo of some newspaper chain embossed beside our names. But we have eyes, ears and brains.

Dayton points out correctly that municipal bonds are not an exciting topic. Where news reporters are concerned, a crime story will trump a school finance story for eye-dazzling, paper-selling headlines.

A friend sent links to my blog columns on CABs to California media outlets, including the Los Angeles Times.

I’m not holding my breath.

There are other reasons besides lack of sex appeal why news people ignore stories about government finance.

Financial stories are a lot more complicated and require more commitment of attention and intelligence than the homicides and petty scandals that keep news people busy.

Still, you’d think reporters would wise up. Don’t they have a sense of public service?

What can be right about gouging property owners for interest compounded to hundreds or even thousands of percent?

Well, there is this other matter. About the movers and the shakers.

The problem with news media is that all too often they see their role in the community as being boosters.

If a town’s leading citizens, such as school board members and administrators, endorse something, it must be okay.

And if it’s not okay, who are they to blow the whistle on their comrades in the Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary or other social networking organizations they belong to?

So much for establishment reflex.

News editors like to think of themselves as members of the elite.

It is not surprising that newspapers often get behind school bond proposals.

That was the case in Michigan in the late 1980s and early 1990s when CABs were being issued by dozens of school districts. In four years, Michigan school debt doubled from $2 billion to $4 billion and was headed for the stars.

Until CABs were outlawed.

CABs were banned in Michigan as a direct result of my reporting on them in the Detroit Free Press. They simply could not stand the light of day.

Now, look at California, where the Poway Unified School District last year sold $105 million of bonds that will require repayment of nearly $1 billion in interest ending in 2051.

Did local news people sniff around and smell something tainted with that bond proposal?

Some citizens raised objections to the bonds, but the San Diego Union-Tribune editorialized for the 2008 proposal, repeating the “no new taxes” mantra they acquired from school officials.

It was a lie, but hey! Be cool, news people. Support schools!

Sad to say, in this case, backing school policy means voters get screwed.

True support of Poway schools would have meant denouncing the proposal as a fraud.

California schools have issued more than 1,000 CABs since 2000. They are bad, bad news. Nary a peep from the press.

The word is getting out.

Joelontheroad.

Kevin Dayton.

Wonder when — if ever — the REAL media will speak up?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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‘Mattycrat’ = rich bully

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Joel

Plutocracy (from Ancient Greek ploutos, meaning “wealth,” and kratos, meaning “power, rule”) is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.

– Wikipedia

We have heard that Gov. Snyder intends to do what we’ve expected, but
hoped he wouldn’t do: go around the will of the Michigan Legislature
and the people who elected them, in order to advance his own agenda.

– Mickey Blashfield, henchman for Matty Moroun

By Joel Thurtell

Hey, Matty — I hear you caught amnesia.

That’s the only way I can figure that preposterous statement by your toady accusing Gov. Snyder of “going around the will of the Michigan Legislature.”

How else but through stunning lack of memory can you justify claiming the governor is circumventing the Legislature “in order to advance his own agenda”?

Let me refresh your memory, Matty.

Who was it, Gov. Snyder or you, the billionaire sociopath, who lavished money on members of the Legislature and bottled up the governor’s bridge bill?

Whose money — Gov. Snyder’s or yours — bought the committee votes that prevented the governor’s proposal for a new international bridge from coming to a vote in the Michigan House of Representatives?

Yes, the governor had an agenda — bringing the New International Trade Crossing project to a vote in the Legislature and building a publicly-controlled bridge between the United States and Canada. Plain as can be.

What is your agenda, Matty?

All too clear: retaining your monopoly bridge, an antiquated span that can’t handle today’s truck traffic between Windsor and Detroit, let alone the kind of traffic we need to grow the region on both sides of the border.

You achieved part of your agenda by making sure the full Legislature would not have a chance to vote yes or no on the new bridge.

You are the one who thwarted “the will of the Legislature,” Matty.

Your agenda is clear, despite the millions you spend on propaganda.

Disguising yourself as a poor, idealistic small-d democrat, you’re posing as defender of the people.

Some citizens blessed with billions of excess wealth find ways of doing good. Think of Bill Gates, spending a fortune around the world to improve public health.

I’m sorry. I demean Bill Gates by mentioning him in the same paragraph with you, Matty.

While vilifying the governor for trying to find legitimate ways of building a new bridge, you’re throwing your bucks at the November ballot and meanwhile polluting the airwaves with false advertisements ballyhooing the “merits” of a decrepit bridge that profits one sleazy billionaire.

You want to veto a bridge that would drain profits from your monopoly, despite the obvious benefits it will have for everyone other than you.

You figured you could trick voters into doing your dirty work.

Now you realize that Gov. Snyder — along with our federal government and the governments of Canada — are about to outfox you.

If construction starts on a new bridge before you get your November vote, your ballot proposal will be shown for the farce it is.

Now let me ask you another question, Matty: If you are such a principled democrat, why are you not seeking a plebiscite in every community that would be affected by construction of a new bridge?

Why stop with Michigan?

Why not go for a ballot proposal in Ontario? In the entire United States and Canada?

Risk management, that’s why.

You know how to corrupt Michigan politics. Corrupting the rest of the United States, let alone Canada, would cost far more money and be certain to fail.

What you really believe in, Matty, is government dictated by whining, greedy rich guys like yourself.

Plutocrat — that’s you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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