Dec 1, 2010

Jobs lose round one in fight to bring DRIC bridge to a vote


It appears Ambassador Bridge owner and GOP sugar daddy Manuel "Matty" Moroun won round one on Tuesday when House Bill 4961 that would authorize Michigan to enter into a public-private partnership with Canada to build the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) bridge failed to be discharged from committee to the Senate floor fro an up or down vote.

Sen. Ray Basham, D-Taylor, has been championing the effort to build the new DRIC bridge to replace and expand the aging Ambassador Bridge, but the discharge motion was withdrawn when it appears he did not have the necessary 19 votes to bring it to the floor for an up or down vote.

“The reason this issue should be discharged is this is probably one of the most single most issues we can deal with in this state to No. 1, create jobs; No. 2, protect this state and this country with homeland security; No. 3, to be able to have some redundancy when it comes to infrastructure crossing our international borders,” Basham said. “There our 26 international border crossings in this country and 24 of them are publicly-owned; the busiest border crossing in this country happens to be in Michigan, and it is privately-owned.”

Basham knows it is a long shot, but he aid he still plans to try again on Wednesday or on the last day of the lame duck on Thursday. There are 10,000 to 35,000 jobs at stake.

The discharge vote has crated massive media interest in Canada, and if the DRIC bridge is not built, no bridge will be built because the Canadians will never give Moroun a permit to land it in Canada because they do not want a multi-lane bridge with heavy trucks empting into downtown Windsor.

“This is a jobs issue, a commerce issue, an issue of trade between Michigan and its largest trading partner, Canada,” Basham said. “This is an issue that has to be dealt with it. It has to be dealt with sooner than later.”


The DRIC study began a decade ago in 2000, but the Moroun financed GOP Senate caucus still wants to delay and kill it so Moroun can keep his monopoly. There were some rumors that Governor-elect Rick Snyder may have had something to do with the decision to ask for a postponement of the vote on Tuesday, but Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, - who reneged on a promise to being the bill to a vote back in May – denied that.

"Rick Snyder has been very clear to me that he does not wish to intrude upon this Legislature," Bishop said in subscription only Gongwer.

That’s simply not true, and he was in the Capitol yesterday, and he weighed in on funding the Pure Michigan campaign and the autism bills.

2 comments:

Not Anonymous said...

According to you, this is Ray Basham's quote:

“There our 26 international border crossings in this country and 24 of them are publicly-owned; the busiest border crossing in this country happens to be in Michigan, and it is privately-owned.”

That says it all right there. The Socialist Democrats want to take away a private business and turn it into another government business.

If this Maround guy is successful and builds his bridge, the jobs will still be created. Bridges don't just appear out of thin air. It takes people to build them. So this is not a job killer.

This is only about government taking over a private business again. Maybe because the current owner is a Republican and that pisses off the Socialist Democrats or maybe because the Socialist Democrats still believe that they can collect the fees rather than an American citizen actually earning money.

Once again, the Socialist Democrats show that they are not for the free enterprise system. They want complete control of everything they can get their hands on.

Communications guru said...

Oh please. Can you ever present a sane, factual argument?

Once again, anonymous coward, there is no such thing as a Socialist Democrat in the United States, and that is just a false, Republican smear.

No one is trying to take away anything, even though customs, border crossings and national security are government functions.

This is what you don’t get; this "Maround guy" (sic) will never build a second bridge, even if he wanted to. The Canadian government does not want heavy trucks dumping into their downtown area and going through17 stop lights to get to the highway, and they will not issue him a permit. The fact is he does not want to build a bridge anyway, and he is using that excuse to fight the DRIC bridge.

No bridge, no jobs.

Who said the owner is a Republican? He’s just buying who can be bought. He also contributed to the Kilpatrick’s; mother and son. But the fact is this DRIC has bipartisan support, like the last three Governors.

Once again, anonymous coward, there is no such thing as a Socialist Democrat in the United States, and that is just a false, Republican smear.

You have no idea what the issue is, do you? Either that, or you are an idiot.

Once again, anonymous wimp, I am still waiting for you to back up your outrageous lie that we were “nearly shoulder to shoulder once.”