Last week was quite interesting.

First, county boards of electors continued to find recall petition language “unclear,” thereby requiring Michigan Recalls P.A.C. to file appeals to circuit courts. The latest inability to read occurred in Oscoda County this past Friday where, by a 2-1 margin, the Oscoda Elector Board rejected recall petition language filed by citizens against Rep. Joel Sheltrown (D-West Branch). The rejected recall language was the EXACT same language that the Kent County Board described last week as the “clearest recall language” they had ever read when they approved the petition to recall Rep. Robert Dean (D-Grand Rapids).

Michigan Recalls also filed appeals in Wayne County on Friday – barely. Seems the Wayne County Clerk refused to accept our appeals for the recalls of Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Twp.) and Reps. Ed Gaffney (R-Grosse Pointe) and Marc Corriveau (D-Northville) because the appeals did not contain transcripts of the Wayne County Board of Electors meeting at which the recall language was rejected. The Clerk insisted transcripts MUST accompany any appeals before she would accept them. Problem is, there IS NO TRANSCRIPT of the Board’s meeting in existence – they (the Board of Electors) are not required to create a transcript. The Clerk demanded documents that do not exist! After many phone calls by Michigan Recalls’ attorney, the Wayne County Chief Judge set a hearing for this Monday to determine whether the Clerk should accept our appeals, and the Clerk then accepted our appeals pending the outcome of Monday’s hearing.

Hypocrite of the Month

State Senator Valde Garcia (RINO-Howell) fathered the intensely-hated new tax on services in the dark of the night last month during the big budget battle. He led efforts to create the tax. He voted for it. He owns it.

But that didn’t stop Senator Garcia from joining Senate Republicans last week in voting to kill his own creation. One could credit Garcia for coming to his senses, and changing his mind, when one reads the Senator’s remarks from the Journal of the Senate last week:

“I would prefer that we had more cuts, but given the fact that we have divided government, we're probably not going to see that.”

So, Valde Garcia SAYS he wants more budget cuts - but check out his actual voting record. Back on September 23, he was the ONLY Senate Republican to vote with Democrats in opposing $574 million in spending cuts that would have balanced the state budget without his new service tax.

Valde Garcia was also the ONLY Republican Senator to vote with Democrats last summer to increase a proposed Single Business Tax replacement by $400 million. Yep, Garcia has agreed with Governor Granholm on every key vote – putting tax hikes before budget cuts every time.
This Week:

More clarity hearings (Oakland County, Rep. Marie Donigan, D-Royal Oak) and more legal hearings. Boy, these updates have been more about lawyers and legal stuff than taxes and political stuff. No way around it, however, the politicians who raised your taxes have a wall to hide behind – a legal system chock-full of their buddies who serve on elector boards, in clerk departments, and even on the bench as judges. But the rule of law must prevail over political cronyism. And to do that, we must overcome the wall. We will.

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