Archive for the ‘Jake Davison’ Category

Jake Davison

This past year was one of breathtaking reforms, painful but unavoidable decisions and fearless leadership by Gov. Rick Snyder. Not since Governor John Engler’s first term (and perhaps never before in Michigan history) has the state’s chief executive put policy so far ahead of politics.

It paid off in time for Engler to be re-elected by a landslide in 1994, but whether Gov. Snyder’s approval ratings rebound in time for his reelection in November 2014 remains to be seen.

Quotes from the governor seem to indicate that 2012 might be a different year – that the large cuts, overdue reforms and special interest ox-goring may be succeeded by a year of “management” and preparing to maintain Republican majorities in the House and Senate. This would be a tragic waste of momentum. If anything, 2012 needs to continue the pace of 2011. I recommend the following reforms be bravely led (Democrats would say “jammed” or “forced”) through the Legislature to the governor’s desk for his signature:

Further cap welfare benefits from 48 months to 42 months. Seriously – four years of welfare is OK but 3.5 years is cruel? This will save money and help save welfare recipients from the narcotic of dependency.

Follow up on the lifting of the arbitrary charter school cap by exempting charter schools from property taxes. Charter schools are public schools too. Traditional public schools don’t pay property taxes. Why should charters?

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Jake Davison

Many long-overdue, common-sense reforms have been passed and signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican Legislature this year. These include the Emergency Financial Manager law, tax reform, teacher tenure reform and the lifting of the arbitrary charter school cap. One reform that has hardly been touched, however, is drug testing of welfare recipients.

State Representative Jeff Farrington (R-Utica) earlier this month introduced House Bill 5223 which would do just that. HB 5223 has been referred to the Committee on Families, Children and Seniors chaired by State Representative Kenneth Kurtz (R-Coldwater), where it currently sits.

The Department of Human Services (DHS), under the fearless leadership of former State Supreme Court Chief Justice Maura Corrigan, is still in the “early process” of creating the exact screening policy, but has determined such a policy is certainly feasible. The process may begin by only targeting “likely” drug users – those who appear at DHS offices under the influence of drugs.

Urinalysis can cost between $25 and $44 per test, while hair follicle analysis can cost anywhere from $75 to $150 for each individual test. Many, like me, think this cost should be deducted directly from the benefit payments of welfare beneficiaries, since keeping them off or getting them off of illegal drugs is in itself a major benefit.

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Jake Davison

While researching the history of the City of Detroit’s financial crisis, I pulled one of my all-time favorite books off the shelf. “Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Coleman Young” is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand how Detroit got to where it is.

It’s an especially good book for Republicans who accept at face value the idea that all of Detroit’s problems were brought upon itself. Reading this book at the politically impressionable age of 18 made me a much more thoughtful person when discussing Detroit with my fellow white, suburban Republicans.

For instance, did you know that the best working and middle-class black neighborhoods in Detroit were bulldozed in the 1950’s in order to make way for interstates? The Black Bottom neighborhood where Young grew-up in the 1920s and ’30s was technically poor, but was one of the best places an African-American could live at the time. It is now entombed under I-75.

And did you know that the deindustrialization of the city was, to an important extent, done on purpose? It’s true. Early in the Cold War, the federal government decided that having half of the country’s auto manufacturing capacity (and therefore tank and plane capacity) inside the blast radius of a single Soviet nuclear weapon was untenable. Federal policy, including the interstate highway system, encouraged Detroit plants to be removed to other parts of the state and out of the state entirely.

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Jake Davison

After 16 years, the cap on charter schools is dead. As I write this, Gov. Snyder is signing the bill into law that will sentence the cap to the ash heap of history in 90 days. That will make March 24, 2012 a glorious date in state history.

Sadly, 49 of Michigan’s 110 state representatives and 16 of its 38 state senators voted to keep children locked in schools for no other reason than to maintain the Michigan Education Association’s near-monopoly on the state’s most important industry. In the House, only one of the 43 Democrats voted for parental and child freedom. None voted for it in the Senate.

So what does this mean for Michigan, parents and students? It means that as soon as August, thousands of children on the waiting list to get out of the MEA’s mediocrity machine will have that chance. Some opponents of this Emancipation Proclamation claimed they were not necessarily against charters, but only open to them as competition for “failing schools.” According to them, if your local traditional public school isn’t a complete basket case like Detroit Public Schools, the ambition of you and your child to get the best possible education isn’t as important as maintaining the teacher union’s plantation.

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Jake Davison

Good evening. My name is Jake Davison and I have the honor of moderating tonight’s Republican presidential debate, the 49th such debate with only 27 left to go before the Iowa caucuses. For tonight’s debate, all of the candidates have been given a dose of truth serum. And to ensure I burn as many personal political bridges as possible, I have also taken the truth serum.

Our first question is for Newt Gingrich. In your experience as the only Speaker to be kicked out of that office by his own party in a record-shattering four short years, what is the best way to actually lose seats in a non-presidential year when the other party controls the White House, which you did in 1998? After all, you are the only person who has ever accomplished this in the past 77 years.

Gingrich: Well, I have the brain of Karl Rove and the self-discipline of a four-year-old meth addict. Whoops, that’s my ninth campaign-destroying quote since lunch.

Davison: The next question is for former Senator Rick Santorum. You’ve proven that, despite the power of incumbency, you can blow it statewide in a swing state like Pennsylvania. Would you lose red states using the same strategy? Come to think of it, why are you here?

Santorum: Like other candidates, I want my own show on Fox News. I thought that was obvious.

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Jake Davison

The Occupy Wall Street “movement” claims 1 percent of the nation has 40 percent of its wealth. That may be true, but it’s also true that roughly 15 percent of the nation has roughly 85 percent of the character traits, attitudes, self-discipline and higher personal expectations (which you might also call snobbery) that put that wealth in their pocket.

I’m willing to admit that the top 2 percenters through 14 percenters may have benefited from some luck, or marriage, or wandered into a safe trade (such as information technology, government middle management or Michigan public school administration) without much intentional self-sacrifice. In fact, some people actually get paid to spout their personal political opinions in newspapers and on web sites.

Odds are, the more money an American earns (not inherits), the less lazy, fat, broke and spendthrift they are. By “odds are,” I also mean “in general” and “with certain exceptions” and “if this has not been your experience, I’m not calling you a liar.” I can’t prove it and you can’t prove I’m wrong, but I’d be happy to bet $10,000 on it.

But the poor grew up with certain disadvantages, you say. People born rich tend to remain rich, the poor stay poor and those in the middle have a hard time getting out of the middle. Yes, thank you for making my point for me. This rule of “behavior begets your bank account” does not just apply to the unkempt, morbidly obese, slack-jawed welfare recipient who takes her four out-of-control children to the Rent-A-Center to lease a couch and the party store for “groceries.” It applies to the working and middle classes as well.

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Jake Davison

Michigan legislators do too much campaigning and not enough real policy work, much of which is the fault of our election cycle. If we’re serious about getting more value out of our elected representatives, we could make some changes that would improve that balance.

The election cycle has 24 months. Michigan is currently in month number 13 of the 2011-12 election cycle, which actually began in November 2010, the day after Gov. Snyder and huge GOP majorities in both houses of the state legislature were elected.

The first two months of the cycle are lame-duck, meaning the Legislature (full of recently defeated and/or term-limited legislators) could vote to send legislation to a lame-duck Gov. Granholm. Another three months are after the primary and before the general election, and the active primary season effectively begins in January of the even-numbered year. So what you have is 12 months of hard-core campaign season versus 12 months of actual work (sometime less).

Legislators officially take office on New Year’s Day, are formally sworn in and have a ceremonial Legislative session in mid-January, then get down to the business of announcing committee assignments, holding hearings and voting on bills in by early February. A mere 18 months later, primaries are held, for which many candidates begin knocking on doors as soon as late February.

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Jake Davison

In 1850, Congress passed the highly unpopular (in the north) Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to help slaves escape to freedom. Rather than follow such a repulsive law, the Michigan legislature passed personal liberty laws forbidding judges from recognizing slave owner claims, requiring jury trials for accused runaways and severely punishing false testimony against free blacks. This legislative civil disobedience, repeated in other northern states, defanged this disgusting law, helped rally abolitionist forces and helped lead to the creation of an anti-slavery party and the constitutional banishment of slavery.

In 2010, Congress passed the highly unpopular (nationwide) ObamaCare health care takeover by the narrowest of margins and against the will of two-thirds of Americans. Seven months later, voters nationwide threw out the Democratic majority in the House that passed it, and nearly did the same in the Senate. ObamaCare is today even more unpopular. The largest seizure of government power in the American history, ObamaCare is rightly reviled for ending American economic exceptionalism and turning one-sixth of our economy into a European-style socialist basket case with the goal of ultimately bankrupting and crushing what little remains of a free market in health care.

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Jake Davison

Keweenaw County: population 2,305. Bois Blanc Pines School District: population 63. Pointe Aux Barques Township: population 10. That’s right, T-E-N.

Can you believe Michigan has 420 school districts and 1,350 townships, cities and villages? Don’t, because it’s untrue. Michigan has 33 percent more local governments than that. We can boast about a grand total of 2,468 local governments, and that’s only counting school districts, intermediate school districts, townships, cities, villages and counties. That’s one major unit of local government for every 4,148 Michiganians.

Reducing the number of each type of local government by 15 percent sounds drastic. But by forcing the consolidation of the smallest units, the smallest township would be Cleveland Township in Leelanau County at 1,040. That’s still pretty damn small.

How are we supposed to think in terms of local economies when we think in terms of true local areas, such as media markets and urban/suburban areas, at a sub-state level? And think of the greater purchasing power of these less tiny governments.

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Jake Davison

Peter Konetchy. Randy Hekman. Scotty Boman. What do they have in common? A Google search suggests they are Republican candidates for U.S. Senate in Michigan. But that is not true. Pete Hoekstra, Clark Durant and Gary Glenn are actual candidates. Konetchy, Hekman and Boman are attention seeking, self-righteous, nobodies who claim to be candidates.

Imagine if I, a 32-year-old who hasn’t played baseball in 18 years, walked up to Detroit Tigers Manager Jim Leyland and said I was trying out to be the first baseman. Leyland would laugh, and if I refused to leave, I would be removed by security. I would not be mentioned at the end of sports news stories. They would not say “also in the hunt for Miguel Cabrera’s job is Jake Davison.”

But if I walked up to senior capital correspondent Tim Skubick and said, “I am running for United States Senate against Debbie Stabenow,” he wouldn’t laugh. I would be mentioned at the end of news stories covering the race. I would get to participate in forums just like Pete Hoekstra and Clark Durant.

So today, inspired by the voices in my head, at the urging of no supporters and to the distress of my family and loved ones, I am officially declaring my candidacy for the United States Senate. I am running for two reasons: First, I have always wanted to prove that anyone who merely says in a public forum they are running for a major office will get considerable media coverage, no matter how lazily they campaign, how bereft of donors they are, or how hare-brained their policy proposals are. Second, related to hare-brained policy proposals, I promise if elected to launch an all-out war on unicorns.

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