How Poor is Michigan?

Pretty poor, it would seem. Poor enough to be forced to close prisons, release prisoners, cut aid to schools, and scar the childhoods of countless youth as it yanks its support away from the state fair. There simply is no other way in which to cut spending in this state that doesn't hurt potential helpless crime victims or innocent children.

Woe that there can never be other solutions!

Oscoda County then must be thanking its lucky, benevolent Lansing star, as six little used stretches of county roads will be receiving first time guard rails this spring at the bargain price of $110,000, 80% of which will come from cash-strapped Lansing.


In the grand scheme of things, how much is $110,000 in a state where the budget routinely falls a billion dollars short? It is a pittance, certainly, and not worthy of any real scrutiny.

But, Oscoda County is the least populated county in all of Michigan's lower peninsula. How many other pittances exist out there in all of Michigan's counties, those with larger populations, those that are larger in geographic size, and those where politicians actually visit on occasion to woo masses of affluent campaign contributing donors?

The fact is, if these roads have ever needed guardrails they needed them long before this financial crisis occurred. Why build them now at a time when Lansing is as financially poor as Jennifer Granholm is economically naive? (Perhaps the answer to the second part of that question answered the first.)

As I have asked many times before, if government leaders are unwilling to make even the easiest of decisions necessary to cut spending and waste, how can we ever expect them to make the truly hard ones?