In the absence of solutions, we are getting half-baked ideas

On the set of the long-running public television series “Off The Record” several days ago, host Tim Skubick was talking up the number of hits the online version of the prior week’s show with independent gubernatorial candidate Mike Duggan had received.

The number was around 10,000. Those are great numbers for the show. He said it was about as many as the previous high-water mark — an episode with rocker/hunter/firearms enthusiast Ted Nugent.

To prove this was a big jump, Skubick asked the producer how many hits the Aug. 15 edition with Karla Wagner from AxMITax — the petition effort to eliminate property taxes — had received.

“That’s probably not the best comparison, Tim,” the producer said back to him. “That one got 66,000. The most we’ve ever seen.”

Whoops.

Here’s another related story. This week, the Michigan House Democrats teamed up with the League of Conservation Voters on the “Ratepayers Bill of Rights.” It’s a bunch of reforms that revolve around a central theme: Electricity rates are too high. The service is unreliable. 

Meanwhile, the fat cats in the corporate world get fatter. State government isn’t holding Consumers, DTE and the rest of the utilities accountable because they’re all such generous political contributors.

The progressive activists behind this “Our Bills Are Too Damn High” coalition look a lot like the coalition that wants to end political contributions from utilities and any other company with at least one $250,000 contract with the state.

It works out to nearly 1,000 entities.

AxMITax and the Ratepayers Bills of Rights seem to be the opposite side of the political spectrum, right? 

One wants to pay the government less. The other wants a lower utility bill.

In that way, the two are very similar. 

They’re both raw, populist and functionally questionable proposals that speak more to frustrations than real solutions.

Without property taxes, funding local schools, police and fire public safety at current levels is impossible. An honest Republican will tell you that.

On the flip side, banning political donations from a certain class of people is an unconstitutional freedom of speech issue.

Try telling that to someone who is venting. Probably not worth the time. 

It’s not hard to see why folks are pissed off beyond reason.

Building a new house is financially challenging. Few adults 35 and younger can afford to buy a home, period, let alone build one.

Prices on everything are going up. A good, affordable used car is hard to find. Wages are stagnant or otherwise not keeping up. Property values are going way up, which is great if you’re selling and moving into a tent. 

The lakeside summer homes that our parents or grandparents somehow afforded? That’s $1 million, please.

Meanwhile, folks are becoming disillusioned with political parties. 

Which party is for the working class, again? Both rely on corporate and special interest money to spin their messages about “fighting for you.”

You could look to the media for guidance, but confidence in traditional media is at record lows. Folks are feeling agitated and abandoned. 

It’s not necessarily a partisan thing. The rich are getting richer to the detriment of everyone else.

What we’re seeing are conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats trying to harness this energy going into the 2026 mid-term elections using their traditional talking points.

For Republicans, it’s convincing people that they’re not as well off as 10 years ago because taxes are too high. We need to get rid of property taxes, or income taxes, or government, or all three.

For Democrats, it’s convincing people that they’re not as well off as 10 years ago because corporate utilities are getting away with one unjustifiable rate increase after another.

Neither party is really offering solutions — just text messages for more money, endless emails and a lot of noise.

In the void, we get this: half-baked ideas that sound great … unless you’re the one in charge of making it work.

(Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)