Four-hour shutdown waste of time and resources

October 8, 2007 —

The morning of Saturday, Sept. 29 found me waking up in my hometown bedroom, drinking a glass of OJ, and listening slack-jawed to the television news while a copy of paper lay on the table beside me. I suppose it would seem almost comical, the look on my face, as my eyes grew wider and my face got redder as I heard the news that Michigan's government was going out of business.

I thought that it simply wasn't possible for the government to just close; they had ingrained themselves and their policies in our lives to such a degree that it seemed impossible to live life without them.My first anarchist thought was, "Awesome! We're going to be free from government tyranny for a while!" I then realized that if the government closed, then so would the prisons, the police stations, the schools, and, well, everything besides private business.

After the shock and panic wore off, I realized that only so-deemed "minor" operations would close at first. These operations included the lottery, driver's licenses and plate renewals, state parks and rest stops, and three-quarters of the state police department.Now, most of the operations seemed worthy enough of cutting, but one in particular seemed, for lack a better word, stupid to cut: the lottery.

Cutting the lottery would hurt schools because, supposedly, 100 percent of profits go there. Also, besides those few government employees needed to do actual paperwork, the majority of the responsibility falls on the seller's shoulders. It makes no sense to cut a source of funding that takes little resources and supports our already-deprived schools.

As the next day dawned and the clock ticked ominously, a new infuriating fact came to light: not only had this budget crisis been simmering for nine months, but also the government had been contemplating a shutdown since May. Here we are, four months later, with a problem that should have been resolved months ago. Better yet, our government should have been responsible enough to have never let the budget deteriorate so greatly in the first place.

As for this "plan" that Governor Granholm proposed, it obviously was not sound enough or else it would have been passed and our state wouldn't be in this pathetic of shape. Not to say that Granholm is solely to blame; our lovely legislators certainly haven't been working the hardest to fix this drama as they sit around in the capital watching YouTube and eating Reese's Pieces (yes, an SVSU student actually saw this happening).

Back to the timeline: Monday I awoke to the day to find out the news that our government did indeed shut down, granted only for four hours. What a waste of time and resources! It must have taken at least a couple hundred thousand, possibly million, dollars to hire workers in the early hours of the morning to shut down and blockade the numerous state parks and rest stops in a matter of mere hours, not to mention the number of other workers it must have taken to close all the branches of The Secretary of State.

Aren't we supposed to be in a budget crisis here? Really, this mini-shutdown was just for shock effect and political finger-pointing purposes.Well, thanks to the hard work and long, procrastinated hours of our legislators, our government is now up-and-running again, but, of course, at great expense to the people. To get our budget back on track, the government has decided to raise the income tax rate from 3.9 percent to 4.35 percent and increase the list of items that sales tax covers.

What does this mean to us? First, the University has been delayed funding, and the funding affects the student organizations and may eventually affect the courses and degree programs available. Secondly, I have one word for you: taxes. Yes, we will be taxed even more on our income and will pay more for goods, just when most of us are already struggling.On an ending note, I would just like to ask: Why are these fools still in office? Let's put a couple of our University's students at the capital and I bet that we accomplish more in a month than our current government has in nine months.