Granholm a surgeon, not very delicate, and leaving scars everywhere

"Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to ... Your hometown, your hometown, your hometown, your hometown." — The Boss, 1984

The $218 per student cut they were bandying about in Lansing sounded like a lot of money.

For Central Montcalm, that would have been in the neighborhood of $415,000. That would have been tough. Then, the State Budget settled on $165, and that was doable for CM. We could withstand that type of cut and still offer competitive programming for our nearly 1,900 students.

Well, that $218 doesn't sound so bad now. That original $400,000 (or so) cut has jumped $150,000 in a swift strike of the pen. Governor Jennifer Granholm enacted an additional cut of $127 on Thursday. She sliced one more time into an already open wound. And she turned to someone else on the other side of the room and said, "You stitch 'em up."

To be fair, the other day I mentioned to someone, "We know they're going to cut again in January, they should just do it right now." (At least we would know, I thought to myself).

The argument is to raise taxes. My argument is to raise taxes on whom? Twenty percent (let me write that out numerically 20%) of the adults in the State are not working. There are no new jobs (where are all of them you promised, Governor?) and the jobs that have left THEY'RE NOT COMING BACK, BOYS! Taxes are not the answer. Maybe a restructuring of the tax system (i.e. how the K–12s are funded) would be in order. Since Proposal A was enacted in 1994, no fewer than 72 tweaks have been "performed" on the structure. Maybe it's time for a radical overhaul.

Or something. Kids should not be this much a part of the political process. You raise taxes or I'll cut expenses. Yes, it makes sense ... but not at THIS expense.