Etch-A-Sketch was big news in NW Ohio yesterday, because Ohio Art is based here, but there’s a substantive problem now brewing for Mitt Romney in Ohio and Michigan, and it just highlights how dead-on the Etch-A-Sketch comparison really is:
Michigan politics is rarely subtle. But the current dustup over a proposed new bridge to Canada has been particularly nasty. Billionaire trucking company owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who beat out Warren Buffett in bidding for the 81-year-old Ambassador Bridge more than three decades ago, is now doing his best to undercut Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s efforts to build a publicly owned competitor to what is the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing.
Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group founded by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch that has embraced some Tea Party causes, bankrolled a public-relations campaign against the proposed public bridge, including mass mailings to state voters. Matty Moroun, who has a personal net worth of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes, also hired Dick Morris, the onetime campaign strategist turned Fox News Network (NWS) pundit, as an adviser. Moroun “has co-opted some of the Tea Party movement, which sends shivers up Republicans’ backbones,” says Tom Shields, spokesman for a coalition of business, labor, and political leaders that supports Snyder’s plan.
Americans For Prosperity and the Koch Brothers oppose the new bridge because it’s publicly funded:
Americans For Prosperity-Michigan today announced a statewide campaign to stop Michigan from plunging $620 million further into debt. The Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC), a taxpayer funded Detroit bridge which traffic studies show is unwarranted, is expected to be introduced in the State Senate within a few weeks.
Mitt Romney (of course) won’t take a stand:
In the lead-up to last month’s presidential primary in Michigan, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney refused to take a stand on the proposed $2 billion span, which is supported by Mich. Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, the Canadian government, and a host of labor and industry officials in both countries.
But the Obama Administration supports the bridge:
On Thursday, the Obama Administration released a statement supporting a proposed second span connecting Detroit and Windsor.
“The New International Trade Crossing is one of the Department of Transportation’s top border priorities,” said the U.S. Department of Transportation in a statement. “The Detroit-Windsor corridor is the largest commercial crossing in North America and carries 24 percent of trade between the U.S. and Canada. We are working with Michigan and the Canadian government to support construction of a new bridge that will boost trade and relieve congestion on the existing crossing,” the statement said.
The GOP Michigan governor supports the bridge. The Obama Administration supports the bridge, and they’re backing that up with 2 billion in matching highway funds. Canada supports the bridge. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothers, and Dick Morris oppose… well, Dick Morris is just picking up a paycheck, so I guess we don’t know where the Fox News personality bloc is on this.
Where is Mitt Romney on the bridge? No one knows. He won’t say:
A day after GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney refused to take a stand on the proposed new bridge between Canada and Detroit, the Romney campaign issued a statement that provided some answers, but not a definitive position.
“Governor Romney believes that it is up to the people of Michigan to decide if another bridge is in the best interest of their state. Governor Romney has confidence that Governor Snyder and the Michigan legislature will come to an agreement on this issue,” read the statement by Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams.
A bridge between the US and Canada and the economy in at least 4 US states and, more broadly, two countries is now a state issue. That’s an absolutely ridiculous answer. It’s an embarrassing answer. Funny, Mitt Romney had no problem supporting Governor Kasich’s union busting law in Ohio, and that really WAS a state issue. Romney was strongly in favor of union busting within the state of Ohio. He had an opinion on the teachers, firefighters and police officers in a state he’s never lived in, but he’s passing on a bridge between the US and Canada in his “home state” of Michigan?
Roy Norton, the consul general of Canada in Detroit, in an email to The Blade Thursday, said 8 million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Canada. “Since one-quarter of all U.S. trade with Canada crosses the Ambassador Bridge, therefore 2 million U.S. jobs depend on the Ambassador Bridge,” he wrote. He said the number of Canadian jobs reliant on the Ambassador Bridge “is comparable,” so that would be another 2 million jobs. Mr. Norton, whose region includes Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky, has urged transportation interests throughout the region to support a new river crossing. “Exports from Ohio to Canada increased [in 2010] by more than 20 percent over 2009,” Mr. Norton wrote. “As it has for many years, Ohio continues to enjoy a significant trade surplus with Canada. Modern border infrastructure linking the Midwest to Canada is essential to moving existing and future trade.” Last year, he also said that building a second Detroit River crossing is Canada’s top national infrastructure priority because of the corridor’s importance to U.S.-Canada trade.
Romney’s afraid to walk out on the bridge because powerful lobbyists within the base of the GOP oppose the project. How in the world is this person going to be as President? What’s the plan, here? He’s elected President and then becomes a completely different person, becomes a person who makes decisions and takes on risk? When is this complete transformation of his essential character and temperament scheduled to occur?
Baud
Since Canada is our largest trading partner, that’s an incredible stat.
That’s not fair, Kay. It’s not really the President’s role to have an opinion about international trade.
Kay
@Baud:
Incredibly, his (alleged) area of expertise is business. I don’t know what that means, “business”. Have conservatives redefined yet another word?
I mean, Jesus Christ. Make a decision, you coward. Say something.
amk
etch-a-sketch, flip-flopper, pathological liar, coward – wonder how many names will mehmney acquire by november.
jibeaux
Well, no. Grover kind of gave away the end game on that one already.
Elizabelle
He’s just trying to protect us from all those Canucks fleeing their country’s failing healthcare system.
Can’t you give the guy credit for anything?
beltane
Well, at least it’s not like anyone can mock Mitt Romney for being “the decider”. I don’t think this android can even take a dump in the morning unless it has been pre-approved by a committee of lobbyists and donors.
Kind of funny that this stick figure is going to be the nominee of the party that worships authority.
Egg Berry
Well put, Kay.
Soylent Green
Let me get this straight. The big money boys want to elect a patsy who will do their bidding? Who knew?
c u n d gulag
Yes, because hiring Dick Morris is the surest way to win!
Even the really rich f*ckin’ idiots, who ought to know better, really DO believe their won BS, and the idiots, like Dick Morris, who are hired to propagandize it.
ROTFLMAOAWASMSHIFDAATHTCEMSTGMFAU!
(Rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-my-ass-off-and-wetting-and-sh*tting-myself-so-hard-I-fell-down-again-and-they-had-to-call-EMS-to-get-my-fat-ass-up!).
Schlemizel
Fortunately none of the national media will be so rude as to put poor Willard on the spot and ask him these questions. So this will just be a small blip in an entire campaign of this sort of sludge, devoid of meaning or substance.
The big question that The Marquis De Mittens can’t answer is why the hell do you want to be the President.
Gary
Hey, at least give Mitt points for consistency. He is simply reaffirming his strong belief in straddling bridges.
Baud
So I understand Moroun’s interest in opposing the bridge, but why are Americans for Prosperity and the Kochs’ opposed?
Kirbster
This is about both economics and foreign policy, so before Mitt can give a definitive answer, he needs to consult some dead Austrians and the Israeli government, to whom economic issues and foreign policy, respectively, will be outsourced by a Romney administration.
kay
@Baud:
Because Moroun has promised to build another private span. They oppose publicly-funded BRIDGES now, apparently, in libertarian-land.
It’s insane. The Tea Party Patriots want private highways.
satby
Etch-a-sketch or chickenshit?
Litlebritdifrnt
Sorry that this is OT (it should be in the thread below) but the Guardian in the UK has come up with a unique way of dealing with the 40 days for Life anti-choice protesters over there.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/23/anti-abortion-40-days-of-life-vigils?CMP=twt_gu
For every day the 40 days for life people picket the BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service) clinics people are donating to the BPAS. I figure this could be done over here with Planned Parenthood. Every day they stay out there picketing the 40 days for life folks are raising money for the clinics.
MattF
Liar and coward. Actually, liar -> coward, but it’s instructive to see that little arrow in action. Etch-A-Sketch should sue for libel.
Persia
@Litlebritdifrnt: The problem is that in the US the fuckheads never go away.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Romney is the Tuco of this election
New Yorker
@Baud:
Or better yet, where are Michigan’s non-Koch big businesses to stand up and say “we want this”? There’s this little company called “GM” whose headquarters is visible from the Ambassador Bridge. Don’t they have an opinion on this issue?
And yes, the knee-jerk opposition to any and all things “public” is truly bewildering sometimes. We’re talking bridges and highways here, not government-mandated collective farms.
CT Voter
Yes. Well, more precisely, that’s exactly what the Romney campaign is trying to convince people of. Once this pesky nomination business is over, he’ll be a completely different candidate (this metamorphosis is complicated by him having to keep repeat that he’s conservative, but whatevs).
The Etch-A-Sketch comment described the plan, crudely, and maybe just derailed it, as well. But still, that’s the plan. And the Romney campaign is counting on the media to help with the transformation–cynically knowing that the media has the attention span and memory of a tse-tse fly. Also, the reasoning abilities. According to the Times this morning, Michelle Obama went shopping at Target LAST YEAR because the Obama campaign was highlighting the “regular folks” aspect of the Obamas THIS MONTH.
Marc
Get a brain! Moroun!
Seebach
Looks like Karma is coming for James O’Keefe now as well:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/former-james-okeefe-accomplice-reveals-barn-incident-and-harassment-complaint/
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
His tenure as governor in MA would indicate that this won’t happen. He was a passive-aggressive partisan hack who attempted to pack anything he could with Republicans while avoid any tough decisions that could ruin his presidential run.
New Yorker
Also, I love the Orwellian name “Americans for Prosperity”, since it’s apparently a group dedicated to smothering the expansion of trade between the US and Canada.
redshirt
A bridge to somewhere!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
We know the answer: He didn’t take any risks the last time he was president/CEO. He just took the money.
Steve
You cannot tell this story without pointing out that Americans for Prosperity went so far as to post fake eviction notices on people’s doors in Detroit to drum up opposition to the bridge. It does not get any scummier than that.
kay
@CT Voter:
I know, and I’m sure that’s what they’re telling donors and “opinion makers” (pundits) but the thing is, these things are happening. They’re real. This was on the front page of the Toledo Blade today, and it was on the front page of the Toledo Blade yesterday.
The NYTimes can ruminate all they want on the inner workings of Obama’s PR push, but all the while Mitt Romney is becoming REAL in these states. They already know Obama. He’s the incumbent. It is Romney’s job to flesh out WTF he IS, as the challenger, and he can’t do it.
MattF
@CT Voter: I think the Romney campaign’s real hope is that the media ignores all those silly ‘policy’ questions and focusses instead on the Reagan-like hair. And I’m not joking, although I wish I was.
jibeaux
@kay:
Maybe he needs a fleshlight? To look for his soul and all?
He can’t flesh himself out because he’s not solid. He assumes the shape of the vessel he’s poured into. I have to assume that there’s some popularity to this novel idea of a publicly owned bridge or else he would have already taken the opposite tack as Obama.
Baud
@jibeaux:
Popular enough that the Republican governor in Michigan supports it.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
can’t the canadian-american trade just be sent down the keystone pipeline? that would solve two problems.
actually, now that i mention it, if romney had a real campaign that could do damage control instead of damage, they would already be connecting the two.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@kay:
Correct. And thus the value of incumbency. Wingnuts succeeded in defining John Kerry, because he had no experience as POTUS, and the slate was mostly clean to tack on about any dishonest meme they could sustain. And the republicans have developed a formidable media message machine, with loyal troops to go on teevee and repeat catch phrases in repetitive robotic fashion. Obama has been president for 4 years and any negative meme the wingers come up with, will have to be supported by Obama’s actual record as recorded by actual events. Something like “swift boating” will fall flat, unless they come up with something like a “whitey tape” previously undiscovered. They will try, no doubt, this tactic. And if it starts looking like they will lose, everything AND the kitchen sink will be slung against the wall, including the race angle. And it will get very ugly.
jibeaux
@Baud: Well, you would have to be a drooling moron to say “$2 billion in matching federal funds, no thanks”. That said, he wouldn’t be the only drooling moron governor. Anyone know if there have been more hilarious postings on Rick Perry’s facebook wall asking Time O the Month related questions?
kay
@jibeaux:
I think people pick up a sense of a person, general outlines, and it will be difficult to dislodge what’s forming even with hundreds of millions of campaign ads and X number of Marc Halperin-like shills.
It’s just instance after instance after instance where Mitt Romney isn’t there.
He could have changed the whole race with ONE bold statement in those horrible, ugly debates, but he can’t handle risk and he can’t move fast, so he didn’t. I don’t know if he even sees these moments, independent of his handlers. He doesn’t appear to.
Origuy
Maybe he’s afraid of heights.
Egg Berry
@kay:
This is not surprising for the libertarians. If you can’t afford to drop coin on crossing the border, that’s just the Invisible Hand at work.
patrick II
Kay:
Grover Norquist:
rlrr
@patrick II:
In other words, a soulless automaton: a pretty description of Mitt Romney…
Tonybrown74
@Kay:
It’s hard to make a stand when you have no spine …
ericblair
@New Yorker:
To be fair, it didn’t say WHOSE prosperity, did it?
So, RomOS gets an upgrade on stage at the convention to RomOS 2.0! New version with improved gonad support and streamlined, goal-oriented workflow and improved data consistency! All these problems with a confusing user interface, data loss, and frequent reboots will be solved!
Do we get to see the beta version yet? I mean, everybody hates the current version, and I’m concerned that the next version won’t be properly tested before the rollout and this is just more marketing bullshit to boot. Besides, wait for 2.1 anyways, since version x.0 of anything is full of new bugs.
kay
@patrick II:
Well, okay, but Romney doesn’t even have to do that here. The money is coming from Canada (half a billion, to Michigan) and the US. The governor of Michigan is planning the Michigan end. The Obama Administration is handling the federal planning and negotiation end.
Romney has to “sign”, not even tangibly write anything, he just has to SAY. He’s frozen in terror, and he’s had MONTHS.
Cathy W
@Steve: And meanwhile The Ambassador Bridge Company is in legal hot water over a public-private-partnership thing to improve access from I-75 to the existing bridge: they built…I believe it was a duty-free store and a gas station?…buildings, at any rate, that benefitted themselves but weren’t part of the project… on land that wasn’t theirs to build on. While they were doing that, they failed to complete their actual part of the project.
Matty Moroun and one of his lackeys spent a couple nights in prison for contempt of court over this – they’d been ordered to tear down the improper construction and complete their work – and in the end the judge ordered the Ambassador Bridge Co. to pay the state to do the work.
Villago Delenda Est
Rih Santorum, in San Antonio, yesterday:
ZOMG, he went there. So much for the VP slot…
Southern Beale
Bristol Palin offended that no one is paying attention to her, especially after she got all that plastic surgery and everything it’s SO UNFAIR and she’s SO OPPRESSEDD and guess what it’s ALL OBAMA’S FAULT.
Good grief I with this family would just go away.
Jennifer
Oh excuse me!
Oh will you excuse me?
I’m just trying to find the bridge…
Has anybody seen the bridge?
Bridge?
(Have you seen the bridge?)
I ain’t seen the bridge!
(Where’s that confounded bridge?)
Baud
OT:
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Given the undercurrents of the GOP being insane and unpalatable to anyone not the prime GOP base, I am going to predict that Obama wins solidly, and dems keep the senate with a 50 50 member breakdown, and recapture the House by just a few votes. If I thought the wingers could control their atavistic impulses and present high octane wingnuttery, then I wouldn’t predict such a rosy picture for dems this election. And Romney, as a political multiple personality, will be exactly the wrong kind of candidate to tame the beast that is the current GOP. Which will be fed by unlimited Citizens United dollars, that will backfire, like it has in the primary, into an orgy of race baiting, and rigid ideological messaging of the negative variety, that wingnut central command will not be able to control. You heard it here first, unless you didn’t/
Disclaimer – prediction void in case of unnatural catastrophes, like a ME war, or a Plague of Palins.
Yutsano
@Southern Beale: Someone’s bank account is getting low so Bristol needs more wingnut welfare. The tell will be when she starts mentioning her child.
CT Voter
@MattF: I’m sure this is the hope. And what a sad commentary on our political media. That’s why I think the Etch-A-Sketch comment did so much damage. It inadvertently highlighted the cravenness of the Romney candidate in a way that political reporters (with some notable exceptions: Greg Sargent) have been unwillling to do.
CT Voter
@Jennifer: All the bridges in Michigan are just the right height.
The Other Bob
@kay:
Mauroon will NEVER build a 2nd private span. He was dragged to that position. He is making too much money on a single span to bother with a second bridge.
The feds should have taken the bridge through eminent domain after 9-11.
Jennifer
@CT Voter: Furthermore, the cow shit has just the right aroma, and the blah people are just the right shade.
Seriously, I’m surprised he didn’t go there.
Steve
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): I think a ME war would actually make people less inclined to change horsemen in the middle of the apocalypse. It’s not like the GOP candidate is Dwight Eisenhower, or even David Petraeus. Romney has zero inherent advantage over Obama on foreign policy issues.
dr. luba
@kay: “The money is coming from Canada (half a billion, to Michigan) and the US. The governor of Michigan is planning the Michigan end. The Obama Administration is handling the federal planning and negotiation end.”
And there is the not so small point that the Canadians won’t let Moroun build another span next to the current one. The Ambassador bridge is integrated into the highway system on the US side, but dumps into a residential neighborhood, far from major highways, on the Canadian side. Teh Canadians want the new bridge built much farther downriver, so they can route all that truck traffic away from town and right onto the highways. Not unreasonable.
Hal
@amk:
Somewhere John Kerry is having a good laugh. But, let’s see if the librul media gives Mitt the Al Gore Sigh/John Kerry flipflopper treatment in a few months.
Jennifer
@The Other Bob: Yeah, just like they should have questioned bin Laden’s relatives before whisking them out of the country? HAH! It is to laugh. The “concern” about national security was never more than convenient window-dressing for the Bushies. No way they’d have taken a billionaire’s bridge away, even if the al-Quaeda hordes were pouring into Michigan over it.
kay
@The Other Bob:
I agree. I read a little bit about him. He’s made lots of promises that he hasn’t kept. It’s SUCH a weird story, how important this single individual is, standing in the way of two huge fucking economic powerhouse countries and hundreds of millions of people.
I don’t know how this country ever moved forward. There are just hordes of crazy-greedy billionaires protecting their own selfish “interests” to the detriment of the broader public, doing their best to PROTECT THE STATUS QUO. I don’t know how it happened.
Soonergrunt
Romney was overheard telling his groundskeeper about this the other day, “I can’t have a position on this issue! I’m running for President, for Pete’s sake!”
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Steve:
this is likely correct. I was just being a tad snarky
Mike in NC
SATSQ: Spineless weasel is spineless.
patrick II
@kay:
Point taken. I was thinking the commonality was the lack of decision making. But in you example, he can’t even make a decision about making a decision.
Culture of Truth
Desktop or mobile verion: why won’t Mitt take a stand??
ericblair
@Steve:
Considering that Romney’s response to a foreign crisis is likely to be “herp derp An Unknown Error Has Occurred. Please Contact System Administrator for Assistance”, I’d tend to agree. Nobody’s had the nerve to stick Romney in a tank or a jet fighter yet, probably because he’d look as out of place as a Prius at a monster truck rally, and it’s then Dukakis II: the Reridiculing.
Don K
@New Yorker:
The fact of the matter is that the time when GM, Ford, and Chrysler controlled the Michigan Republican Party, and the UAW controlled the Michigan Democratic Party is long past. The big money behind the MRP comes from the DeVos family (Amway) – and the Kochs, of course. Oh, and Maroun. The joke around here is that Matty bought himself a State Senate in the 2010 election.
One of the latest ideas making its way through the Tea Party brigades (I have an acquaintance who’s hardcore TP) is that federal aid for highways is unconstitutional. Never mind that stuff in Article I about Post Roads.
Culture of Truth
Leave Mitt alone!
quannlace
Romney even wouldn’t have to do that. Don’t presidents have that auto-pen thingie that copies their signature? Mitts could be on permanent vacation!
japa21
@Villago Delenda Est: Okay, so we have a potential ad of Santorum telling his supporters to vote for Obama rather than Romney. Hmm, the Mulsim is better than the Mormon. What’s a Christian to do?
rlrr
@Hal:
IOKIYAR
Culture of Truth
@japa21: Write in Jesus
RosiesDad
Who really fathered Mitt Romney’s children? Because he clearly lacks testicles.
gbear
@Origuy:
He’s probably afraid of hearing people yell “JUMP, you fucker”
Thoughtcrime
rlrr
@Don K:
I never understood how the DeVos family got so rich. Does anybody actually by that Amway shit?
rlrr
@Culture of Truth:
Where’s his birth certificate?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Don K:
Some days I wish we could bring Ike back and ask what he thinks of the GOP now.
kay
@patrick II:
I think it is really, genuinely, an issue of basic fitness for the job with Romney.
McCain would make decisions. We’d hate his decisions, and they’d be reckless and crazy, but he would, could, has the capacity, to do that.
BDeevDad
So how soon until we start hearing Etch-A-Sketch hecklers at Romney events?
gbear
I honestly don’t think he has any plan other than getting elected. He’ll just subcontract it all out after that. That’s what a businessman does.
catclub
@New Yorker: Just like GM boldly stood up and said “Single payer health coverage would solve all our pension problems, we are totally for it.”
during the healthcare debate.
The GOP really can convince people to vote against their own self-interest. Which is interesting when they _appear_ to be the ones always pushing things that are in the indivduals’ self-interest rather than the interests of the entire US
catclub
Someone else mentioned it, but I will emphasize.
The pundits rarely call someone a liar directly.
Rachel Maddow did, for 15 minutes that JCole has memorialized.
Now she needs to call him a coward. Even harder.
amk
@rlrr: It’s a typical mlm scam that has so far gone remarkably without any investigation in any of the countries they operate.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Public Property is Treason, Citizen.
JD Rhoades
All of the wingnut Republicans I know still confidently assert that the actual nominee makes no difference, the important thing is that Obama lose, and he will lose because he’s such a “dismal failure.” I certainly encourage them to keep thinking like that.
ppcli
This is a crucial issue for a lot of reasons, not just for Michigan but for the entire US. One of the reasons is that it shows how thoroughly it is possible for money to corrupt the political process. Now of course everyone knows that – but this case is so extreme it is truly mind-boggling. There is absolutely *NO* reason for anyone in Michigan to be opposed to the bridge except i) opposition in principle to *anything* publicly owned and run. ii) they are bought off by Maroun. (I might add, despite my many reservations about Snyder, he has been in favor of the bridge from the start, while his Democratic opponent Bernero was opposed. Which means: bought off.)
In connection with i), note that we are not talking about a choice just between public and private but rather between public and a privately owned extra bridge built by Maroun, whose behaviour has been so outrageous that it has gotten him cited for contempt of court several times, and even tossed in jail overnight for it. (For example: he was required to do work to improve the access to the bridge. Instead of doing what he was supposed to do, he diverted traffic to a bunch of duty-free gasoline pumps that he had not been given permission to open. And just kept going on it even when the court told him several times to knock it off. I could write pages just about that sort of thing.) Also, a bridge built by Maroun isn’t really an option because unlike most such things, where the Republicans can operate in a reality-independent fantasy world, this is a decision that can’t go forward without Canada’s cooperation, and there is no f*cking way they are having anything more to do with Maroun than they already have to.
Point: the Republicans were saying “Hey, we can’t afford it – think of the next generations, you know. The children and grandchildren”. So Canada agreed to *front the money*, to be repaid out of tolls once the bridge is built. (And, as Maroun has proven, there’s money to be made in them thar tolls.) So it can be done in a way that costs Michigan nothing (though it will forfeit a lot of potential revenue).
So let’s weigh i) and ii) above against the reasons to build the bridge: i) more or less a quarter of the shipping with the US’s major trade partner crosses at a poorly maintained, creaky old bridge run by a shameless scofflaw. ii)It will bring a huge number of well-paying jobs (many temporary, but not all)and economic activity to Detroit, a city that desperately needs them and it. iii) It will establish a more open channel of trade to an economy (Southern Ontario/Southeastern Québec) that is flourishing, unlike Michigan’s which is struggling. iv) Continuing to play stupid political games at the behest of a flagrant scofflaw greasing lots of palms is seriously pissing off that flourishing economy/major trade partner, something that Michigan is not in the kind of bargaining position economically that they can afford to do. v) Every major corporation (GM, Ford, Chrysler, fx.) in Michigan is in favour. vi) If Michigan chooses to, they could opt to have the whole thing paid for by Canada and the Feds, at the cost of forfeiting much future toll revenue of course. vii+) I could list many more, but my fingers are getting tired.
A bit of good news in all of this is that with Canada and the Feds agreeing to foot the bill if Michigan presses the issue, it is in principle possible for Snyder to go ahead without the legislature’s approval, since he only needs them for the money-approving part. [Or so I’m told. Apparently the legal issues are tricky.] So it may be that the Michigan legislature is not so much facing a choice between public bridge and Maroun bridge [that Canada/Ontario will never agree to] but rather public bridge with Michigan financial participation and potential rewards versus a public bridge essentially owned by other government entities. Let’s hope.
To repeat – this situation needs much more national attention than it has received. It’s a glaring illustration of how extreme the corrupted-by-money political situation has become here.
Soonergrunt
Just off twitter:
From twitter feed @JMSummers (Juana Summers, national political reporter for Politico, following Rick Santorum around)
Don K
@rlrr:
That’s a great question. I’ve never known anyone who does, but then maybe I just don’t know the right people. All I know is the family has been bankrolling the MRP for a few decades now.
On the auto company side, the only serious money (like hundreds of millions serious) is the Ford family. Other than them, auto company money these days is all hired executives, and while some of them have tens of millions, they don’t have the kind of money that can buy a political party.
jibeaux
@JD Rhoades: I admit, that is roughly how I felt in 2004. So I encourage the same thinking.
LanceThruster
This might be my favorite BJ story of all time. It really highlights what an empty suit Willard is.
Who knew a secondary definition of “Mittigate” is to waffle or abstain due to lack of a spinal column?
As in Etch-A-Sketch man regularly chooses to mittigate his views until the general election reboot.
chopper
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
the bridge is painted white anyway, so nobody can go over it.
JD Rhoades
@jibeaux:
There’s a reason I keep comparing Mitt Romney to John Kerry. The parallels get downright eerie.
beltane
@rlrr: It’s not that people are buying Amway products as much as it is people getting suckered into thinking they are going to get rich selling Amway products. My brother-in-law (a wingnut, of course) “invested” at least $6,000 and three years of his life in the Amway scam before he realized he wasn’t going to get rich off of it.
As they say, a fool and his money are easily parted, and the DeVos family has made its fortune off this fact.
Davis X. Machina
@catclub:
They can convince you to redefine it. And then voting GOP is in your self-interest.
And they can do it so well that that sitting hungry and sick in the ruins of a once-great republic run people that look like you is infinitely preferable to living in a flourishing republic run, not so much by people who themselves look different, sound funny, and worship the wrong God, but by those who merely refuse to hate people who look different, sound funny, and worship the wrong God.
lamh35
So POTUS was asked to comment on Trayvon Martin case. I agree with TNC it was pitche perfect. Take away quote: “If I Had A Son, He Would Look Like Trayvon!”
http://youtu.be/3OHweAKZYPM
Villago Delenda Est
@JD Rhoades:
There’s one place where there’s no parallel:
Kerry volunteered for a dangerous assignment in Vietnam. He didn’t have to…he’d already served a tour offshore, which counted as his ‘Nam tour.
OvenMitt was serving his cult, not his country, in Paris.
amk
the koch bastid brothers fail to take over cato.
Rick Taylor
It seems unfair to condemn Romney for being spineless, when the Republican primaries are set up to select the spineless candidate. A candidate who takes a stand must either endorse the crazinesss, in which case he’s rejected by the establishment, or vice versa.
Martin
@lamh35: How would he know unless he fathered an illegitimate child! Someone dig up Breitbart!
scav
@Rick Taylor: No, one is entirely free to condemn the Mehtch-A-Sketch-a-tron for spinelessness, even if the other side chooses to promote it. All it confirms is that he’s possibly the winningest of the spineless confraternity playing for the other team.
LanceThruster
@Rick Taylor:
I might have said “lacking the courage of his convictions” but he’s shown that those are entirely interchangeable as needed.
Mr. Breeze is any way the opportunistic wind blows.
Martin
@Villago Delenda Est: Hey, be nice. Paris is a tough gig. You know how snotty the frogs can be.
LanceThruster
@Martin:
[chortle!]
scav
@Martin: Jetez-moi dans cette ville epineuse, frère Renard.
jibeaux
@beltane: Fucking pyramid schemes, how do they work?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jibeaux:
Pyramids work best when they are built by the banks of DeNial.
JD Rhoades
@Villago Delenda Est:
The parallel there is that Kerry tried to make that experience one of the themes of his campaign, and saw it turned against him. Romney’s trying to make his years in business the theme of his campaign, and it’s already being turned against him.
One thing I am glad of, however, is we’re not going to hear a lot of wearisome “reporting for duty” bullshit in this campaign.
JD Rhoades
@lamh35:
This, of course, will be used to portray Obama as the REAL racist here. Mark my words.
Mustang Bobby
Speaking as someone who has spent hours waiting to cross the Ambassador Bridge both into and out of Canada — once at the exact center point so that the people in the front seat of the car were in the U.S. and us in the back were in Canada — replacing that old bridge, or at the least supplementing it, can’t happen soon enough. And until a year ago or so, it was impossible to get off the bridge and get onto I-75 without having to follow a circuitous route through the back streets of Detroit.
I suspect the only reason Romney hasn’t said anything about it is because he can’t figure out a way to come down on both sides without sounding like an idiot. So far he’s got nothing to worry about.
lamh35
@JD Rhoades: @Martin:
Ya know what, I don’t care if idiots try to make hay out of what the POTUS said. First of all, genetics is pretty straight forward, barring some anomaly (albinism), if POTUS and FLOTUS had a son what the hell would he look like? I certainly don’t expect a child of their to look like Santorum’s. So yeah, is they had a son, they’d probably superficially look like a Black child!
2nd, it was a very measured response. he made sure he mentioned that he is part of the executive branch, it is the DOJ who has direct involvement in the case and he wants to be careful that what he says does not reflect or harm the DOJ investigation in any way.
The statement was pitch-darn-perfect.
POTUS is darned if he does and darned if he doesn’t, so it’s way better for him to be on the good foot than not.
Thor Heyerdahl
Matty Maroun could face repercussions from Elections Ontario officials for illegal attempts to externally influence voting in the Windsor area.
Matty doesn’t want to lose his cash cow of “duty free” fuel sales.
Arriving at the Ambassador Bridge on the Windsor side is hell. The 401 highway does not reach the bridge and as Kay mentioned above devolves into a busy city road (Talbot Rd/Huron Church Rd). This road passes within 1/2 mile of 2 colleges; 1 university campus; and 6-7 schools. The pollution and noise must be unbelievable.
The sheer number of large trucks is phenomenal. I drove on Huron Church Road once 6.5 years ago on a Sunday at midday. Arriving at stoplights, I could count 15-20 rigs within my immediate sight and rearview mirror. Sitting under the Ambassador Bridge in the nearby park and looking up and counting trucks, there were 20-30 trucks (either direction) every minute that I was there.
Even with all this traffic, there are many truckers who avoid the Ambassador altogether and head upriver to cross on the Blue Water Bridge at Sarnia/Port Huron. It directly links highways on both sides of the border (Highway 402 & Interstates 69/94). Plus Matty being a typical Republican, he skimps on the bridge maintenance – so people take other routes, since the quality of his bridge is shit.
The Canadian government could (but wouldn’t) simply expropriate the Canadian half of the bridge under the auspices of national security. However they could send Federal inspectors to close and inspect the Canuck side of the bridge for a few hours (under Industry Canada or Fisheries Canada) since the bridge crosses a major part of the Great Lakes Waterway (the Detroit River) and a structural collapse could affect Canadian trade and Great Lake fishing interests. Let Matty know that we’re not going to put up with his shit. Kinda like FDR did with Robert Moses…Moses wanted a bridge instead of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel-FDR wrote an edict saying it would affect national security with the Brooklyn Navy Yard if a bridge were to collapse…so it had to be a tunnel.
So this Canuck says – fuck the Mackinac Institue, the Koch Bros., the De Vos scam clan, the idiotic Michigan Republican House & Senate, and Matty Moron himself.
Oh and fuck Willard too since he obviously needs some of Rush’s blue pills to stand firm on the issue.
JD Rhoades
@lamh35:
I totally agree. I wasn’t directing my snark at the President.
patrick II
@kay:
You and I agree on Romney’s unfitness for the job.
I am just saying that in some quarters (Norquist’s) Romney’s apparent indecisiveness is considered a positive feature.
And I qualify with “apparent” because I am not sure Romney is indecisive, but rather that he has made one decision that overrides the others; that he should be elected president of the United States and he will say — or not say — whatever he thinks is necessary to reach that goal.
If I were to say there is one trait that is most dangerous about Mitt Romney it is ruthlessness not indecisiveness. After all, he made his living stealing people’s pension funds from faltering companies. He thinks robbing the vulnerable is capitalistic creative destruction. That is a strong decision, just a ruthless one.
lamh35
@JD Rhoades: oh yeah, I realize that, it was just an aside in this whole mess.
:)
Thor Heyerdahl
Sorry dr. luba for not crediting your point.
Steve
@lamh35: If the Obamas had a son he would look like Malcolm X, obv.
Barry
I don’t really think that this will be a big issue, because most people don’t realize what it means. If they had to personally cross back and forth, they’d know.
Valdivia
Kay I think you have hit the nail on the head of this one to the more basic issue regarding Romney. He can’t make decisions on the fly or even with months of consideration unless he thinks he has the perfect poll tested one. It is disqualifying for the job he seeks.
quannlace
Well, is this some surprise? If Romney couldn’t muster the courage to say that Limbaugh calling a woman a slut and prostitute was a bad thing (not the words I’d have used.)….
ppcli
@Thor Heyerdahl: Excellent post. I have a long rant about this above, but it’s been in moderation for over an hour.
I’ve also thought that the Canadian side should start playing hardball. Close the Bridge for chunks of time, channel Hwy 401 traffic toward Sarnia, and start conveying to Michigan [Maroun is hopeless] that if they don’t start behaving like responsible partners, Detroit/Sarnia traffic will start being energetically encouraged to cross at Niagara Falls and Sault Ste. Marie crossing traffic from North-Central Ontario will be channeled toward the Minnesota side of Superior.
Canuckistani Tom
@Thor Heyerdahl:
The problem with the Ambassador bridge and the connections on the Canadian side is that the bridge was designed to connect Detroit and Windsor, not Michigan & Ontario or Canada & the US.
Similarly, the 401 was designed to go to Windsor, not through it. Both of the these pieces of infrastructure were designed in the era of ‘Why would anyone drive to the US?’
Now if you want to connect the two, you’ve got to demolish a chunk of the city of Windsor to do it.
Kay
@ppcli:
I took it out of moderation, so it should go up soon.
LanceThruster
@quannlace:
Not a surprise but essential considering our species’ short attention span.
As is advised for those engaged in public speaking on how to get your point across —
Tell ’em. Tell ’em again. Tell ’em what you just told ’em.
LanceThruster
For the record, what I liked about Kay’s observations were how spot on the digs at “Mr. Bidnit” were, and how his roboprocessor could not triangulate a position fast enough he could walk away from later.
What I want to know is if the LDS preznit/prophet condones such buffoonery and disingenuousness. My guess is that he does – an LDS POTUS would be quite a feather in their missionary recruiting cap.
Thank the FSM that is about as likely as the 2nd coming.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Very well put.
Mike G
Rmoney is a classic corporate politiccal weasel. Never commit, never take a stand unless absolutely compelled to do so — then it’s easier to slither away with clean hands if/when it goes bad.
I’ve worked in corporations with scores of assholes like this, very attentive to their own self-interest but worse than useless in actually getting anything done.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Wait, so gubbmint doesn’t even get to build bridges and roads now? Seriously?
You issue the bonds, you take the money, you use the money to build the bridge, you charge the tolls to cross the bridge, and you use the tolls to pay off the debt over 30-50 years. Worked really well for building the railroads back in the 19th century. Worked really well for the East India Company, long before that.
Do these idiots even know how the real world works anymore?
My real takeaway here is that the GOP is now a radical party, taken over by fanatics who don’t even seem to recognize the validity of the Nation State (as that term has been understood for over 400 years).
Our culture is in some deep, serious trouble.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
A rhetorical question, I assume.
Have you ever read about what a massive clusterfuck the internal governance of the Confederate States of America was during the Civil War? Same problem. As it turns out it is kind of hard for the state to be sovereign when every asshat has his own idea of what constitutes “the state”. Who could have predicted that?
rea
@The Other Bob: “Maroun will NEVER build a 2nd private span.”
Hell, it was only a couple of months ago that he was thrown in jail for contempt of court, after blowing off DOT and court-ordered deadlines for completing the connectors between his bridge and the interstate. The bridge has long been a traffic nightmare.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
The weak government raised under the Articles of Confederation was even more clusterfucky. That earlier version of the US did manage to beat King George, but probably wouldn’t have lasted past 1812 had the new improved Constitution not been ratifed.
As I suggested over in the ACA thread, we seem to have been dragged into deciding, again, whether the US is a Union or a Confederation. Because if you give the GOP what they want, a Confederacy is the inevitable end state.
gene108
Anything that’s not as scary as the Ambassador Bridge to drive across will be an improvement.
When I was a kid living in Ann Arbor, we’d hop across the bridge to Windsor. I had to keep my eyes closed the whole time. Something about the bridge just gave me the willies.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
That is a penetrating observation. Following up on it, it seems to me that this is something that each generation of Americans ends up having to decide for themselves, except for those times when one side (e.g. the Union circa 1865) gives the other side such a gawdawful beat-down that the issue is effectively tabled for a while.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh, I love that. One governor who refused to send any of his troops to support Lee, because he wanted to keep them for hunting Indians… another governor who was sitting on mounds of uniforms and other clothes but refused to send them to Lee’s army…
“Pro-Confederate, pro-states’ rights” people apparently don’t realize that states’ rights are what killed their beloved Confederacy in the first place – it has the logical consistency of “I support Hitler, and I support his taking a sleeping pill before D-Day.”
dr. luba
@rea: “Hell, it was only a couple of months ago that he was thrown in jail for contempt of court, after blowing off DOT and court-ordered deadlines for completing the connectors between his bridge and the interstate. The bridge has long been a traffic nightmare.”
The reason he didn’t build the connector was because it was more profitable to build duty free gas stations in the same space. Charge a slightly cheaper price than the going rate, make huge profits. So what if the state has spent millions on its part of the connector, and traffic is still being forced onto Detroit side streets. Not his problem.
Not until a judge who couldn’t be bought threw his ass in jail. Overnight. With a promise of more jail time to come. Suddenly he was eager to finish the job. Judge didn’t trust him, though, a forced his company to pay the state millions so that MDOT (which has taken over) could finish the job.
Part of the reason that he didn’t want to build the connector he had agreed to was because it would have meant tearing down the work he had begun on a second (unapproved) bridge. I do think he is serious about building a second bridge–cheaply, perhaps, and in not hurry–but if there’s money to be made, he would do it. It’s just the Canadians stopping him, at this point, since our laws have had little effect for the most part.
ericblair
@dr. luba:
And if it had to be pointed out to anyone, welcome to Libertarian Land. Build shitty, barely adequate infrastructure and charge tolls. Use any available capital to tack on profitable add-ons but not to improve the infrastructure above absolute minimums. Spend all your effort on preventing competition, since this is generally a lot more bang for your buck than actually improving the service.
And if anyone actually thinks that “getting the government out of the way” would help, he’d just pay off or break the kneecaps of anyone seriously interested in building another bridge. Not like that has never happened before.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
This is why I think the alt-history folks who talk about what would have happened if the CSA had won the war don’t take their analysis deep enough when they postulate a rump-Union USA and the CSA facing off against each other for the remainder of the 19th Cen and into the 20th. The more logical outcome of a CSA victory would have been the eventual splintering of the CSA into multiple rival substates, resulting in Balkan levels of political complexity.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I agree.
I’ll throw in another, unrelated pet peeve at alternate post-Civil War history books: none of them acknowledge that if the Union had been split, the ultimate winner would’ve been the British Empire – not the North or the South. With two major powers in North America rather than one, they’d have played them off against each other and alternately supported the U.S. and the C.S. to make sure neither one of them ever got big enough to challenge the British (it’s what they’d been doing on the European continent for a while and would keep doing all the way through the World Wars).
Any look at “how things might have turned out” needs to take London into account at least as much as Washington or Richmond and probably a lot more. But that’s not what the readers want to read about…
Suezboo
What I don’t understand is why Rmoney wants to be President at all.I mean, the lifestyle in the White House would, if anything, be a step down. He already has all the money and, therefore, power he could want. He is obviously uncomfortable around people;he has no defined principles that he believes will make the country run better like e.g. Obama or Ron Paul (he may be wrong but I think he believes his way would be a better idea). So, what’s in it for Mitt? Why bother?
Puzzled in SA
Suezboo
What I don’t understand is why Rmoney wants to be President at all.I mean, the lifestyle in the White House would, if anything, be a step down. He already has all the money and, therefore, power he could want. He is obviously uncomfortable around people;he has no defined principles that he believes will make the country run better like e.g. Obama or Ron Paul (he may be wrong but I think he believes his way would be a better idea). So, what’s in it for Mitt? Why bother?
Puzzled in SA
Sad_Dem
Well, he can’t just come out and say that he supports a billionaire’s monopolistic bridge and get elected, can he? If he did, some tribe of slack-jawed troglodytes could cost him the election. It would be like getting caught hiring illegals.
Jay in Oregon
@Chris:
That sounds fascinating. Can you recommend any reading on life/governance in the Confederacy?
Suezboo
I apologize for double posting. Sincerely.
LanceThruster
@Suezboo:
Because church elders would benefit from the PR of an LDS preznit, and monetarily from the connections to power.
Maybe they could also sell strips of public sidewalks around town to issue citations for slutty attire and gay kissing.
JoeBlog
It’s because Romney is a businessman that he is saying little.
The DRIC bridge is a moneyloser since traffic is down 40% since 2000 and is not coming back in the foreseeable future. It is not financially viable without huge Government guarantees to foreign P3 operators.
Do you really think that he is going to say that the Michigan Governor who endorsed him only before the Primary is dumb for supporting such a boondoggle!
He should be praised instead for not embarrassing Snyder.