Jack Lessenberry
It doesn't take much to figure out how Metro Times columnist Jack Lessenberry feels about the conservative Republican lawmakers in Lansing.
He writes in this week's column:
Well, it's now clear what kind of future the Republicans who run the state legislature have in mind for us.
The roads will continue to fall apart, though we will throw a little money at them by raising taxes on the working poor. There won't be any nasty film industry; they are moving now to not only kill the last of the film tax credit, but to eliminate the Michigan Film Office itself, which has been around since 1979.
But they do have a plan for economic growth: Michigan is to become the nation's privatized penal colony!
I'm not kidding — and by the way, except for the roads, our supposedly moderate governor seems happily down with their agenda. Last month, the legislature narrowly passed a bill that would allow the GEO Group, a multinational "correctional services" provider, to import hundreds of the most dangerous criminals from Vermont and Washington state and guard them at a now privately run prison in Baldwin, up in mostly rural northwest Michigan. Baldwin is in Lake County, which 24/7 Wall St. ranks as the poorest in the state. Gov. Rick Snyder dithered for a couple of weeks, and then signed it.
Lessenberry also weighs in on the latest legislation signed by Gov. Rick Snyder that allows state-funded, "faith-based" adoption agencies to reject placing children with people if it has a religious objevction.
In another stunning demonstration of their bigoted stupidity, our lawmakers passed and sent to the governor a package of bills allowing state-funded, "faith-based" adoption agencies to reject placing children with anyone to whom it has a "religious objection."
By which they mean same-sex couples, of course. Granted, this is bigoted, horrible, and an attempt to kiss the anatomy of the religious right. But what's really stupid is that they did this just days before the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.
The right-wingers are, of course, trying to make sure they can protect the faith-based agencies from having to give babies to those filthy queers, even if the Supreme Court rules that people of the same sex have a complete right to marry.
After all, wouldn't you rather have a good heterosexual mom like the woman who tortured and killed her kids and stuffed them in the freezer than the horrible gay moms like the two Hazel Park nurses who save and nurture at-risk babies?
