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My Political Soap Box

Defending Citizens Since 1972





 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.


 


Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

(3) A person shall not receive a contribution from a person other than a committee unless, for purposes of the recipient person's record keeping and reporting requirements, the contribution is accompanied by the name and address of each person who contributed to the total amount of the contribution and the name, address, occupation, employer, and principal place of business of each person who contributed more than $100.00 to the total amount of the contribution.
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JOBS

While politicians promise to create jobs and provide opportunities to keep our young people from leaving the State for greener pastures, I've never seen a politician actually create a job for anyone but themselves and their cronies. Michigan must be on the road to building a better business and industry environment.

Legislators, governors and presidents cannot create meaningful jobs, it is merely their obligation to help create an environment conducive to job creation. Facilitating opportunity and unleashing the potential of our people is the best way to ensure the economic, business and industrial climate in the Upper Peninsula and all of Michigan. Facilitating job growth is accomplished through consistency and sincerity.

EDUCATION


Our education programs don't need to worry about competing with other countries; our public education programs need to worry about competing with home schooling. The loss of the basics has created the need for parents to educate their students without the built-in social agendas. Parents, teachers and the local boards of education must be enabled to provide learning according to their standards, not according to dictates of the MEA or some State or federal bureaucracy.

Education is an act or experience having a formative effect on the mind, character or ability of an individual. In this sense, education is the process by with society deliberately transmits its knowledge from one generation to the next. Education has been subjugated to indoctrination over recent years.

We need to get back to the basics of education, and allow parents to develop their children’s theocratic and social perceptions. Schools should help teach our children how to think, not tell them what to think.

BURDENSOME TAXATION

Its time that politicans quit saying, "Pay their fair share," in order to finance governments' addicted spenders and replace it with "Let the people keep their fair share!"

Planning is critical to business, industry and our own households. Federal and State tax impositions take their toll on everyone’s bottom-line. Taxes must be consistent, fair and long-term in order to provide a level of certainty in planning. After the citizens approved a 50% increase in the sales tax, from 4% to 6%, the State of Michigan has been overstepping that which the citizens authorized. It’s time to reign-in the overzealous social engineers.

Michigan’s requirement of a balanced budget had become meaningless as state officials have used accounting gimmicks and one-time fixes to give the appearance of a balanced budget. Our state tax system has many of the same flaws found in the federal system. People are not treated equally, and special favors are given to those who behave in accordance with the whim of those creating our tax laws. Our tax policies often punish the very people who create the jobs we so desperately need to help invigorate Michigan’s economy.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Mining, timber, and agriculture compliment our fisheries industry. Additionally recreational opportunities have been a fundamentally important component of tourism. Unfortunately there has been transient resistance to the utilization of Michigan's natural resources by anyone not wearing spandex.

While the State of Michigan spends millions to expand walking and bicycle paths throughout the State, those who ride horseback, ORVs, motocross bikes, and snowmobiles have been targeted by the Michigan DNR and Michigan’s transient class. The outdoors of the Upper Peninsula has become less enjoyable for sportsmen. Overzealous rules, regulations, and laws have destroyed most recreational freedoms in the State of Michigan.

The UP is already so thickly layered with State PILT lands and national forests that our county road commissions can barely afford to plow the roads. Government needs to pick up their fair share for the expenses encountered by local and county governments.
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Jim Hafeman for 109th District

Michigan House of Representatives

Vision Integrity
Guts

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