If I were to thow a dart at a President, it would be Ronnie Ray-Gun. About the time that Wall Street began preying on municipalities nationwide and race to the bottom tax rebates to corporations to attract business slowly drove many into bankruptcy. Wall Street and the Repubs ripped apart the Rust Belt (sorry for the slur) like Sherman on his march to the sea. End result...undrinkable water, collapsed sewers, failing bridges, underfunded schools, environmental degredation...potholes and garbage.

And this, in a bottom-up view of our society...one part of our society where there is no shortage of funding is criminal justice and law enforcement. The police have their own independent source of funding in America...they prey upon the poor and disenfranchised.

Last edited Sun Apr 21, 2019, 07:35 AM - Edit history (2)

Everyone understands there needs to be some increase, but most voters believe there needs to be other revenue streams other than just the gas tax. With the addition of the 45 cents, Michigan would have a gas tax of over 71 cents per gallon. In addition, Michigan also has 6 % sales tax on gas, which adds another 18 cents to that if price is $3/gal making the total tax over 90 cents per gallon

Couple that with the highest cost auto insurance in the country and motorists are simply feed up. The best scenario would be to link the gas tax increase with much needed insurance reforms, and I think people would be much more agreeable.

Gov. Whitmer is also getting a lot of criticism for her statement during the pre election debates.

“Gretchen Whitmer wants to have a 20-cent gas increase,” her Republican general election opponent Bill Schuette said during the Oct. 12 debate in Grand Rapids. “That’s ridiculous,” Whitmer replied, telling Schuette his assertion was “nonsense, and you know it.”

Now it's at a point where there are so many bad roads, it's going to take a lot of money to fix them all. I don't know what the solution is, but I think it's going to have to be multiple sources of revenue at this point. I don't understand why the roads are so bad here. I've lived in four states and this is the worst, and please don't tell me it's because of the cold weather. I can name about 20 states that have weather colder than Michigan.

I also have never understood why Michigan's car insurance rates are the highest. I know Governor Whitmer is trying to find a solution to that too. She's inherited quite a mess and it's only been three months.