[one is lonely]

Originally Posted by michigan83

I don't agree with hardly anything in your post, but it's probably true that unions are not beneficial when it comes to our roads. If only because a lot of dollars end up going to pay prevailing wages instead of paying for nice pavement.

You don't agree with it because you're exactly the kind of person it describes. You perfectly expressed the attitude I described in the topic post. Reread that paragraph you wrote!

Originally Posted by snoopygirlmi

During Granholm, road money was used to fix budget holes because of the balanced budget amendment. The budget is constitutionally required to be balanced.

And why do you think Michigan would the type of state to pass laws like that without making proper provisions for a balanced budget, forcing politicians to essentially rob other funds to stay balanced? Well, reread my first post and you might understand why.

Originally Posted by jackmichigan

You obviously have not traveled around Michigan--otherwise you would have easily seen that Michigan is loaded with "big government projects": a vast array of highway projects usurping thousands of acres of land. But don't you realize that government employees do not construct and maintain those highways? Do you have any idea how many of the private contractors have unionized employees? I rather doubt that you do.

I've been all over Michigan, from Sault Ste. Marie to Adrian, Detroit to Grand Rapids. And sure, any state with 9 million people will have some big government projects. It's unavoidable. But Michigan is stingy with roads and infrastructural projects. Sorry, but it's true.

And I do get the governments hire private contractors. The point of my post wasn't to delineate every facet of how public money is spent. I assumed the reader possessed some degree of education on the matter. But regardless, you're the one spitting vitriol at the unions again.

Originally Posted by ram2

Tell me where exactly the toll boths on I-75 in Ohio are located.

Har, har, har. Very clever. I can guarantee you that the Ohio Turnpike saves the state a ton of money, making it easier to fund other roads (which is my response to those that pointed out all the freeways in Ohio that don't collect tolls).

[jackmichigan]

Originally Posted by one is lonely

But Michigan is stingy with roads and infrastructural projects.

You've got to be kidding. The Michigan Department of Transportation (sic, again) has never met a road it didn't want to build. Maintenance? Well, that's another issue. It seems that their plan is to maintain less, so they can persuade all of the politicians and lackey citizens to give them more money...so they can build some more. Of course, Governor Snyder seems to be in on it.

Originally Posted by one is lonely

But regardless, you're the one spitting vitriol at the unions again.

Really? Is your reading comprehension that poor?

[one is lonely]

Originally Posted by jackmichigan

Really? Is your reading comprehension that poor?

It's worse than you could EVER imagine.

[ram2]

Originally Posted by one is lonely

Har, har, har. Very clever. I can guarantee you that the Ohio Turnpike saves the state a ton of money, making it easier to fund other roads (which is my response to those that pointed out all the freeways in Ohio that don't collect tolls).

Ohio has more miles of Interstate than Michigan.

Are Michigan's political clowns in Washington, DC getting a fair share of federal gas tax money brought back to Michigan?

[ram2]

Originally Posted by snoopygirlmi

During Granholm, road money was used to fix budget holes because of the balanced budget amendment. The budget is constitutionally required to be balanced.

During Granholm, gas tax money was diverted away from road repair such as the freeway turtle fence by Muskegon.

[pokeable]

Would like to thank my home state for the parting gift of a flat tire from a pothole (punctured the sidewall of my wife's Pirellis) over Memorial Day weekend.

Lucky we pulled over @ the 9 mile exit off 75. Anymore miles, and we probably would have shredded the tire and damaged the wheel. o.O

[detwahDJ]

Originally Posted by ram2

During Granholm, gas tax money was diverted away from road repair such as the freeway turtle fence by Muskegon.

Those turtles, some quite large and crossing by the thousands along the Muskegon River, were a road hazard and state officials considered it a traffic safety issue. Despite what you heard on right-wing radio, the chain link fence was constructed with federal money dedicated to such purposes - not road repair.
Since when is the government not responsible for the safety of both wildlife and motorists? Naturally, certain "tax-hating" republican partisans, like the ribbon-cutting Hoekstra, decided it could somehow be exploited as a wedge issue against "big needless spending" democrats like Granholm.

[MI-Roger]

I can quickly think of four contributing reasons for Michigan's bad roads, and two of these cannot be controlled.

Geography - Michigan is far enough North to be subject to deeply cold winter temperatures, yet far enough South to also enjoy periods of much milder weather during the winter months. This results in multiple freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycles each year that ravage the road beds, weakening them temporarily, which leads to degradation of the roads they support.

Geology - Michigan has little natural hard stone. Most stone in Michigan is either a variety of limestone, which is a medium strength stone, and we also have a lot of Flints and Chilts. In fact, we have so much Flint that we named a city after it! Both Flints and Chilts cause Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR) in concrete when exposed to water. The concrete starts to fail from the inside out, almost like a cancer. This results in huge gaping holes at all concrete highway control joints which must be repaired, consuming massive amounts of roadway repair dollars. The joints do not remain sealed due to the repeated freeze-thaw cycles each winter. Water enters the joints and starts ASR.

Lack of reasonable weight limits - Michigan uses the same per axle weight limit for trucks that is applied in other states, but Michigan places no limit on the number of axles which may be under a truck. This results in legal loads of 180,000 pounds or more on many semis. Contrast this to states such as Delaware which limited truck axles at one time to only three; one steering axle, one drive axle, and one trailer axle. Lighter weight trucks would prolong the life of our roads and return heavy freight hauling to the rail system.

Michigan's tax system - Michigan's tax system is a maze of protected buckets of funding. Each classification of expenditure has its own revenue collection system and money cannot be moved from bucket to bucket to address the most pressing needs. Road money can ONLY come from fuel taxes. If we want more money spent on roads we must either endure a higher fuel tax or change the protected bucket system to allow a transfer of funds..

[Chance and Change]

Most people who complain about Unions, are people seeking to ride a degree to a particular field of work and expect to be paid a unreasonable high salary based solely on the degree.
Some of these same people got their degree by parents who worked Unions Jobs and paid for it with Union Wages.

You don't hear Anti-Union Rhetoric except from the degree riders, or Business owner and self employed vocational people, who refuse to pay people a living wage and afford people functional benefits to those whom work for them or with them.
The biggest problems Unions had in older times was a lack of "cross utilization", but that has been resolved back in the 1990's as well as a Three Tier pay scale, where people earned their way to the higher pay position by their length of service.
But the Degree Riders screwed that up, by trying to fire people just before they made their next higher pay grade.

Many people have the delusion that they can spend 4 yrs on a college/university campus, and expect to walk off and become a decision maker in some company. When they have no idea about civic responsibility of labor, nor do they have any hands on gained experience. they come with a lot of professor dribble, and a trained in sense of detesting people who actually do the labor.
Since this process has been in place, every company has been crashed. It's why Detroit today looks broken down, because it was 'degree riders" and their political correct, fake reporting, and chasing a bonus to the point they lied about the needs of the business and resulted to cost companies to suffer more and more losses. These same higher level of degree riders, Over-leveraged anything and everything, based on "speculator value", which they knew was 'fiction", yet they leveraged the company based on that crap anyway. All because of the Alumni Buddy up madness.
Degree riders, thought they could rule the world by pushing paper and chasing slaves on foreign soil.. and all they did was destroy American Industry, American Cities, and a voided out the whole concept of ethnics.

People with English and Literature Degree trying to head manufacturing divisions, and other labor intensive division, resulted to do nothing but use their letter writing skills to craft crazy policy, devise malicious non function jargon and play flattery games with each other with 'word play". All the while production suffered, labor was abused, and people were treated as if they were less than, by these "over zealous", "over self inflated" degree riders. They'd sell out anything for a pat on the back and a bonus.
What is left is a decayed city with a devastated industrial sector.

[Chance and Change]

When Detroit focused on vocational and technical skills, it thrived. The push to destroy Unions was as much so tied to the Civil Rights Act, because the system run by White Male Establishment of the Old Order, did not want, Women, Minorities and Dire Poor Whites and Poor Immigrants to have any means to gain any level of economic uplift.
It's a classic study in Bigoted System Operations. The system detested that minorities could get class and craft jobs, and women could get class and craft jobs. When this was no longer a protected area for the American White Male. The push began to destroy Unions and everything those Unions represented, as to worker rights. Because those rights were not something the system wanted Minorities, Women and Poor Immigrants and Poor Whites to have.
Like clockwork, every 6-8 yrs, the system was crashed, to take away any gains made by Women, Minorities and Dire Poor Whites and Poor Immigrants, Once the unions were busted and jobs shipped away, the system regained its 'white male dominated income spectrum", and it added in the high intensity of focus on the 'degree system", but that degree had to come from a University which Women, Minorities and Dire Poor Whites and Poor Immigrants could not afford to send their kids. This was the second tier method to protect the high pay for white males dominated systems. Only now are people waking up to see the reality of the spectrum. Because:
Women, Minorities and Dire Poor Whites and Poor Immigrants are now all considered members of what is called “THE POOR. The system design is set up to deny whatever, whenever and however, to The POOR. This insures a protective shield for the White Male Dominance of Equitable Employment Positions.

People, should read "Northern Emancipation", it has a full spectrum outlay of the "job protective measures which have been in place since the pre and post Civil War Era. After the Civil War and Freedom Acts were passed, the "job protection programming went into high gear, to protect the jobs for white males".
In the East, the Irish controlled various job sectors, the Germans, the American Elites, and other Anglo Ethnic groups.

People truly should look at the American History in Perspective, and it explains in full detail why and how Detroit was brought down and how the plan to bring the Rust Belt and the Industrial Sectors of the North to is downfall.
The South had already met is down fall, as it had a staunch program to insure that it would not pay a fair nor living wage to minorities, women, nor poor whites. Thus the Plantation System died out. But Management by Plantation System Mentality took over in the North. A Bankrupt Detroit is the end result.
We see it replicated across this nation.