No commentary necessary.

Two seemingly unrelated bits of information arrived in my mailbox today — one via snail mail, the other electronically. The first was a notice from the Michigan Department of Treasury informing me that “Public Act 94 of 2007 raised the income tax rate to 4.35 percent effective October 1, 2007.” Hmmm, that’s an interesting way of putting it, kind of like “mistakes were made.” Funny that the letter didn’t say “Governor Granholm, with the bipartisan support of the legislature raised the income tax rate.” Isn’t she proud of this accomplishment if says so much about who we are and what our vision is for Michigan?

The other bit was an email from do-not-reply@jennifergranholm.com. I guess that’s the governor’s email address, but it sounds kind of forbidding. Anyway, this note is all about her husband’s column on leadership, Reading for Leading. I have no idea why the governor would think I might be interested in signing up to receive the First Gentleman’s missive “free of charge” each week, but to my surprise a few lines did catch my attention. Mr. Mulhern talks about the importance of having an inspiring personal vision statement and that you really need to understand the context in order to truly appreciate it. Mulhern cites the example of two young women he recently had on his radio show whose personal vision statements inspired him and concludes with these words:

With vision and purpose of their own, they don’t have to wait for others, blame others, or even follow others. They have a direction of their own and can lead.

Obviously, Governor Granholm is proud of her husband’s work as a leadership coach, but by the standard he sets above, she doesn’t measure up. Look at the ongoing budget mess in which she waited and waited and waited and blamed and blamed and blamed. Michigan still doesn’t have a solution. This is leadership? Not in Mulhern’s book, and certainly not in mine.

Does anybody else in Michigan get the feeling we are in the movie Groundhog’s Day?  Governor Granholm simply gives the same speech over and over again, believing that eventually a light bulb will flick on above our heads, and we will suddenly realize she has been right all along.  But the ending will be the same — more deadlock, no progress, more jobs lost, no hope for Michigan’s future.

We heard that speech again tonight.  Amazingly, she still takes no responsibility for the state of Michigan’s economy and the fiscal crisis.  First she blames the legislature:

The Legislature has had more than enough time to avert this crisis by adopting a balanced budget that’s the one lawmaking-duty the Legislature is given by the Michigan Constitution.

Then, she blames President Bush:

We know our state has been challenged like no other by trade policies that shipped tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs overseas.

And of course, she blames former Governor Engler:

And we know Michigan’s fiscal policies in the 90s turned a billion dollar surplus into a huge deficit, leaving our state unprepared for the economic tsunami it’s faced in this new century.

Governor Granholm tops off the blamefest by sending out blast e-mails with this amazing claim:

Governor Granholm is demanding real leadership and immediate action from Michigan’s elected officials in finding a comprehensive solution to the state’s budget crisis.

Let me get this straight.  She refuses responsibility, blames others, and now demands leadership?  From whom?  Maybe she should look in the mirror.  Granholm demanding leadership is like Britney Spears demanding respect.

Clearly, Granholm and her defenders on the left equate leadership with raising taxes.  But in her speech tonight, she can’t even bring herself to use the “T” word.  Instead, she relies on the innocuous-sounding “revenues.”  If she can’t even bring herself to use the word, how can she expect Michigan’s hard-pressed families to pay them?

“Is this OK with you,” whispered the clerk at the Secretary of State’s office.  “If not, we can pick out another one,” she said as she furtively tipped the new license plate  in my direction.  It only took me a split second to realize that she was concerned about the number “666″ on the plate. 

 ”It’s fine,” I said.  “Just as long as it doesn’t say Granholm!”

“You got that right,” she replied.  “But you know, I’m mad at all of them.”

And that’s really the Granholm strategy if there is one.  Get the public mad at everybody concerned, so we aren’t just mad at her. 

By the way, my experience at the SOS office wasn’t all bad.  Since I had two plates to renew and my license (had to be in person), I figured I better get it done today since my birthday is only two weeks away.  Arriving at the office around 10:45, I could barely get in the door, there were so many people waiting.  I took a number (36) and glanced up to see what number was being served (72).  Uh-oh, I thought, this will take forever.  But, the staff was efficient and friendly and people adapted to the challenge.  Some got a number and waited.  Others went off to run errands and come back.  Nobody died.  Nobody even cried other than a burly two and half year old who charged out the door every time his mother let him loose.  I was out the door by noon, and as I left, the next number in the dispenser was 99 and the number being served was 42, which translates into a wait time of about an hour.  Time enough to get a number, have lunch and get your business done — all without a tax increase.

Michigan Republicans got a rare treat tonight — the opportunity to get past the sound bites and hear directly from two of the leading candidates for president.  Fred Thompson got the first at bat and started off with a nice comment about meeting Supreme Court Chief Justice Cliff Taylor.  He said:  “Isn’t great to have a judge who bides by the Constitution and doesn’t make it up as he goes along?”   Then he followed that by introducing his family and noting that his wife, Jeri, would make a better First Lady than Bill Clinton ever would.  With a good opener and nice leadoff joke, the audience edged forward in their seats, ready for a great speech, but they kept waiting and waiting because Thompson appeared to be making it up as he went along.  His speech rambled along in a disjointed review of his resume from backwoods Tennessee to the halls of Washington and back again.  Thompson’s folksy style may have appealed to some, but he didn’t come anywhere near meeting the high expectations that greeted him on the Island. 

In contrast, McCain’s speech was a work of art.  He was humble, inspiring, patriotic, eloquent, honest, thoughtful, realistic and frank.  McCain was also the only speaker that I saw get a standing ovation during his speech when he blasted the Iranian president and said he shouldn’t be allowed to speak at Columbia University.  In a brilliant twist, McCain said that Columbia should instead “invite the ROTC back on campus to honor the men and women who put their lives on the line defending our freedom.”

McCain made me wish George Bush could speak about Iraq with such clarity and force.  For example, McCain said:

Although the outcome remains uncertain, we must give General Petraeus and the Americans he has the honor to command adequate time to salvage from the wreckage of our past mistakes a measure of stability for Iraq and the Middle East, and a more secure future for the American people. To concede defeat — as many leading Democrats now advocate — would strengthen al Qaeda, empower Iran and other hostile powers in the Middle East, unleash a full scale civil war in Iraq that could quite possibly provoke genocide there, and destabilize the entire region as neighboring powers come to the aid of their favored factions. The consequences would threaten us for years, and I am certain would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would impose even greater sacrifices on us.

In just a few words, McCain made the case for America to finish the job in Iraq and laid out the consequences of retreat in the starkest possible terms.  While many rank and file Republicans have problems with McCain on issues such as immigration and campaign finance reform, he was in tune with them tonight on the most important issue facing our nation.  And it wasn’t the straight talker of 2004, but the elder statesman of 2007 who wants nothing more than “to use whatever meager talents I possess, and every resource God has granted me to protect the security of this great and good nation from all enemies foreign and domestic.” 

There is no better spokesman for conservative values on the national stage than Newt Gingrich.  After his morning presentation to a standing room only crowd in the Grand Hotel Theater, my wife exclaimed:  “Gingrich is my hero.”  Let’s face it.  Gingrich gets it.  Over and over, he quoted Margaret Thatcher, “first win the argument, then win the vote.”  Gingrich knows how to win the argument because he has the facts and he puts the message in terms people can understand.  For example, you should have seen the jaws drop in the crowd when he said that in 1950, Detroit had 1.8 million people and boasted the highest per capita income in the nation.

Only somebody like Gingrich could walk into a partisan crowd and say that “this country is tired of Red vs. Blue — automatic partisanship.  We need to come together for Red White and Blue solutions.”  The all Red Republican crowd loved it.  Who else could say this:  “The reason Ronald Reagan was such an effective communicator was because he wasn’t a Republican.” 

Clearly, Gingrich was well briefed on Michigan’s current fiscal challenges.  He talked about how Granholm had managed to squander the great credit rating she inherited from Engler within 11 months.  He said:  “That’s like your teenager getting a credit card and not realizing they actually have to pay the bill.” 

Gingrich explained that it’s not enough to have just the right policies, we have to have the right language to communicate them.  So regarding the current debate in Lansing, our message should be:  “No government shutdown, no job killing tax increase.  I don’t know why the other side wants to kill jobs.  Isn’t a 7.4 percent unemployment rate high enough?  Do they want to go for a record?  The bottom line is controlling spending in Lansing or average citizens will have to control their own spending to pay higher taxes.”

Gingrich also endorsed a version of Mike Bouchard’s idea to simply pass a budget with exactly the amount of revenue expected and then give Granholm unprecedented authority to spend it.  Though he said, “you might want to allocate it quarterly so she doesn’t spend it all in the first seven months!”  And then he hit the biggest applause of the morning with:  “If Dick DeVos had won the job, we wouldn’t be having this fight.”

The line for Mitt Romney’s luncheon speech at the Mackinac Conference appeared to begin forming right after breakfast finished.  By the time lunch was about to begin, the line stretched all the way down the hall through the parlor, out the door and down the porch.  Romney spent about a half hour working the tables, shaking heads and having pictures taken.  He definitely got rock-star treatment from this crowd and clearly his campaign is the best organized both here on the island and statewide.

Romney’s speech is posted on the campaign website so there is no need to summarize it here, but he did add a nice touch to the beginning when he recalled bringing his girlfriend to the stay for a week at the Governor’s Mackinac Residence back when he was in high school.  Then he said she was still his girlfiend today as he introduced his wife, Ann.

Romney’s speech was virtually all brand new and he rolled out a new “Republicans for Change” message that complements the TV and radio ads that he is running in early primary and caucus states. 

NOTE:  prior to Romney’s remarks, Rocky charged up the crowd with a short, emotional speech about the six friends he has lost in Iraq.  “My six friends didn’t die for a lie or a mistake,” he said.  “We believe in victory.  We believe in America.  Let’s all come together and enlist in the fight for what we believe in!”

Both former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Congressman Duncan Hunter revved up the the more than 2000 Republicans and 100 assorted media gathered at the biennial Mackinac Leadership Conference.  Giuliani spoke first at the opening night dinner while attendees patiently waited for their food.  Other than my wife, who appeared ready to begin gnawing at her high heels, nobody seemed to mind giving Rudy the chance to be the main course.

 Rudy didn’t disappoint, telling a story about the time a reporter asked him what he could for Michigan.  The answer:  “Get you a new governor!”  The crowd roared.   He talked about how New York City was in terrible shape when he became mayor — with 10.5 percent unemployment a $2.3 billion deficit and 65 percent of residents saying they would rather live somewhere else.  He said the principles he used to turn the city around are the same principles that can turn Michigan around — lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation.

Rudy blasted the Democratic candidates for president for wanting to raise taxes to fund socialized medicine and asked for people in the audience if they wanted to go to Cuba for medical care.  If you do, he said, Michael Moore will take you and Hillary Clinton will pay.

In an interesting twist, Giuliani said he recently read a book by French president Nicolas Sarkosy in which he talks about wanting to reform France by cutting the corporate tax rate (which is already lower than the U.S.) and also getting the French to work more than 35 hours per week (through tax incentives for extra work).  Then, Rudy said he has had a recurring dream since reading the book.   In the dream, Sarkozy is on a plane flying to America to learn how we solve problems and his plane has to suddenly swerve to miss a plane coming from the U.S.  The planes fly so close together, he can see three people on board who are flying to France to study the French system and bring it back to the U.S.  Can you guess who was on that plane – Clinton, Obama and Edwards!

Rudy really charged up the crowd when he talked about the Islamic Terrorists War on Us.  He said this was a more accurate description than the War on Terror.  Essentially, he said this election is about whether we stay on offense, with the Patriot Act, tough interrogation policies and fighting for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan or going back to playing defense like the 1990s when the first World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist attacks (like the Tanzanian embassy, Khobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole) were virtually ignored and treated like criminal offenses.

Finally, Rudy blasted Moveon.org for its shameful attack on General Petraeus and then turned his fire on Hillary Clinton for voting no on the Senate resolution supporting Petraeus and condemning the scurrilous attack on him in the New York Times.  He said the bottom line is that Hillary is afraid of taking on Moveon.org.  And the crowd went wild when he said “if you can’t stand up to Moveon.org, how can you stand up to Ahmadinejad, etc.”  Frankly, the applause was so loud I couldn’t hear the end of his sentence.

Cong. Hunter took a different approach but also impressed the crowd with his passion and his depth of experience, especially on defense issues.  In particular, he talked about leveling the playing field to revitalize American manufacturing as a national security concern.  He said that bringing good paying jobs back to our country (through fair trade and stopping Chinese cheating) was the key to bringing Reagan Democrats back to the Republic Party.

Hunter focused on an issue that has been a priority for him in Congress — making sure American companies are at the top of the list for defense contracts.  This also means making sure that foreign countries who aren’t our allies shouldn’t be the source of critical parts or weapons systems.  These are critical components like guidance systems for smart bombs and armor plating for troop-carrying humvees.

Hunter told a great story, linking together the heroism of Medal of Honor recipients from WWII, Vietnam and the Iraq War, noting that in the first instance our troops saved hundreds of millions of people from tyranny, in the second, we left with the job undone and now we can’t let that happen again.  He also grabbed the attention of crowd when he talked about we can’t just worry about Iraq; we must also be concerned about how China is arming itself with high-tech weapons — planes, destroyers, submarines, ballistic missiles — at an alarming rate.

The audience also perked up when he talked about border security and his work building a fence to stop smuggling across the border from Tijuana to San Diego.  He said crime was rampant and people were getting murdered and robbed before the fence was built.  Now, smuggling is down 90 percent.  The success of that fence led him to draft the legislation that passed last year and was signed by the president to build 854 miles of fence all the way to Texas.  He said only 30 miles of fence has been built to date and promised to finish the fence in six months if he became president.

A Vietnam veteran himself, Hunter closed by quoting from two letters, one from a soldier coming home from WWII, talking about the importance of family and other from a Marine returning home from Iraq, talking about his family and how this war was to keep them safe and how family lifts us up and are the strength of this country.  There was not a dry eye in the house when Hunter said the letters were written by his father and his son, who at the time had just returned from Fallujah and the fiercest battles of the Iraq War.

NOTE:  Both Giuliani and Hunter were introduced by Rep. Candice Miller — Rudy because she is the chair of his Michigan campaign and Hunter because he is her long time colleague on the House Armed Services Committee.  After her passionate introductions,  I heard a number of people comment that they didn’t know Miller was such a good speaker.  She is definitely a crowd favorite.

In a bipartisan vote, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to condemn the vicious personal attack on General David Petraeus by Moveon.org.  Seventy-two senators voted for the resolution, but Michigan’s own Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow voted no.  Here’s what the resolution said:

To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

What are Michigan voters to make of the Levin/Stabenow “no” vote?  Does it mean they don’t support General Petraeus and his troops?  Does it mean they endorse personal attacks like the MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times that labeled General Petraeus, “General Betray Us”? 

I have an idea of what it means.  Levin and Stabenow are beholden to liberal netroots like MoveOn and are terrified to cross them in any way.  What a shame.  When given the choice of standing up for our troops in battle or kowtowing to liberal special interests, Levin and Stabenow chose the latter.  Who’s the betrayer now?

My son and I were early for church so we dropped by at the Beaner’s (I mean Bigby’s) coffee shop kitty-corner from the Capitol — me for a cup of coffee, him for lemon crunch bar and hot chocolate.  Seeing that I was dressed in a suit, another patron wondered if I worked for the Legislature.  “Nope,” I said, “We’re on our way to church and just curious if the crew across the street is going to raise our taxes.”  We chatted a bit and then I turned back to my son, Frankie.

“Daddy,” Frankie said,  “Why do they want to raise our taxes?” 

“Do you know what taxes are?” I answered.

He said, “Yes, it’s the money they take from you to pay for government.”

And I said, “That’s right, and taxes pay for roads and schools and lots of other stuff.  But sometimes government spends more than taxes bring in, so they either have to raise taxes or try to spend less on stuff.”

Frankie replied, “I don’t think they should raise taxes.  They should spend less.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because then families would have less to spend on the things we need like food and clothes and stuff like that,” Frankie answered emphatically.

Now, if my nine-year-old fourth grader can figure that out, why can’t the Democrats in the House figure it out? 

Thank you, House Republicans.  And Frankie thanks you, too.