JustThinking.us

Prodded by Mitch Albom, Jeff Daniels, and Mike Binder among others, the state of Michigan under the Granholm administration, passed a program offering tax credits to the entertaiment industry in an effort to induce producers to do business creating product in the state of Michigan.

This program included a 40% refundable tax credit as revealed below in the "Fast Facts" taken directly from the Michigan Film Office's web page.

Fast Facts

Minimum spend of at least $50,000 in Michigan to be eligible.

40% refundable tax credit, across the board on Michigan expenditures.

Claim an extra 2% if filming in one of the 136 Core Communities in Michigan (click the link to download and print a map of the core communities).

Labor and Crew: 40%-42% Resident Below the Line. 40%-42% Above the Line regardless of residency. 30% Non-resident Below the Line.

$2 million salary cap per employee per production. There is no other cap and no sunset.

All applicants can expect a 4 week review process once all materials have been received.

Must spend at least $500,000 annually in Michigan to be eligible for an interactive web site project.

By anyone's standard, the program has been a success at bringing projects to the state of Michigan.

Among the "feature films" shot in the state of Michigan are Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, Michael Moore's Capitalism, a Love Strory , and Up in the Air starring George Clooney (which by the way, I really, really liked) among others.

George Clooney is back in town as I type this, working on something.

Michigan's new governor, Rick Snyder has proposed a drastic reduction in the total amount available for this tax credit program and in so doing has raised the ire of Mitch Albom among others who correctly (I think) contend that movie productions and jobs won't come to Michigan without favored tax treatment.

The below is a chart from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank which demonstrates Michigan's loss of some 400,000 manufacturing jobs during the first decade of the 21st century.

Ok, so here's my question.

To my knowledge, which I will admit to being incomplete on this issue, Mitch Albom, Jeff Daniels, Mike Binder and Michael Moore have never advocated for anything approaching a 40+% "across the board tax credit on all Michigan expenditures" for anyone other than themselves via their industry.

If this idea is working so well when it comes to the movie business, why wouldn't it work equally well attracting business in industries where all the infrastructure, buildings, equipment and a trained up and highly skilled labor force, in other words the whole enchilada ..... IS ALREADY IN PLACE?

Why aren't these guys advocating this kind of a program for everyone?

Just askin'.

“Then there are the vast majority of academics all over the world. They are apologists for the prevailing system. They are paid to support it. They take the king’s shilling, and they do the king’s bidding. Some of these academics are paid directly by the state as faculty members in tax-funded, state-licensed, accredited universities. Others are paid indirectly as faculty members in private universities that are protected from competition by means of accreditation systems that are backed up by laws against unaccredited institutions that use the word ‘university.’

“Every accredited university is part of a cartel. This is why universities are not price competitive. This is why they can afford to grant tenure — a practice unknown in the private sector.

“There is an army of academic critics of Mises’ argument that the free market should be trusted to provide economic planning, and that people backed up by other people carrying guns and badges should not be trusted. In this army are thousands of state-trained and state-accredited economists, who assert that they believe in the free market.

When push comes to shove, they don’t.

“In the entire academic profession, all over the world, there is not a single textbook in economics that says that central banking is conceptually and operationally a cartel-enforcement institution for privately owned large banks: an anti-free market institution. There never has been such a textbook. Every economics textbook separates the chapter on cartels from the chapter on central banks. Neither chapter refers the reader to the other chapter.

“This is not random. This is a crucial part of the arrangement between the national government and the bankers’ cartel in every nation. The academic cartel joins with the bankers’ cartel to screen out any suggestion in a textbook that either of these state-licensed cartels is in fact a cartel. ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. You promote the right of my agents to carry guns and badges, and I’ll promote yours.’"

Gary North PhD, Whiskey and Gunpowder 3/18/2011”

If you check out the moon tonight as it rises, you will see it at it the closest it's been to planet Earth in eighteen years.

Click the photo below for an outstanding presentation from Space.com.

If you have the time, go through all of the half a dozen or so links they provide including the photo essay, the infographic and NASA's page explaining that no ... Supermoon's don't cause earthquakes.

Very good stuff.

The photo below will link you up to the reprint of our friend Richard Nolle's increasingly famous piece about Supermoon published now twice in The Mountain Astrologer.

Also good stuff.

From the World Nuclear Association, by way of Casey Research.

Nuclear electricity generation by country.

The width of the bar signifies the relative total electricity within each country.

 “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.”

“When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.”

“If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good”

 “Either move or be moved.”

 “Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.”

 “In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.”

“I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.”  What I've been saying.

“With one day's reading a man may have the key in his hands.”

 “The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.”

“Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.”

“Wars are made to make debt.”

“The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.”

 “But the one thing you should not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.”

“The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.”

What we have here is just a spectacular opportunity for comparisons.

Yup, looks about the same to me.

We decided to spare you the shots of the stacked up bodies and forlorn survivors.

You can trust me when I tell you that those looked about the same as well.

We saw this first at our friend Charles G's facebook page, and have subsequently received emails from Brendan C., Cheryl W. and Kirk?

It already has well over 330,000 hits, so maybe you've seen it.

I've just been sitting here watching it over and over.

Near the end of this thing, somebody's little house just floats by with probably damn near their entire life in it.

Sitting on his rooftop 15 kilometers out to sea.

Click the photo for the story.