For the second time in less than a month, a recall petition was filed against Michigan Senator Roger Kahn in July.  The Saginaw County Election Commission has since determined the recall language is clear enough to proceed to signature collection.

Donald V. Miller II, of Thomas Township, filed the petition, and his issue is with Kahn's vote to eliminate most pension tax exemptions.  He would need to collect 25 percent of the signatures in the last gubernatorial election in Kahn's district of Saginaw and Gratiot counties to force a recall election.

Republicans Volunteer Again For Arson Watch  

For the second year in a row, the Saginaw Republicans will have a crew in the City of Saginaw's Arson Watch  Board-Up Event.  The event is on Friday, October 14th from 8:00am - 2:00pm.

For the event, members of Arson Watch and the volunteers plan to board-up 100 abandoned homes in a single day!  Saginaw Fire Marshal Gregory Barton notes, "With that community involvement, you're proving that people are taking back their neighborhoods, taking the city back so that we can make it a better place to live."

Last year, the Republicans fielded several volunteers from Senator Roger Kahn's, John Milne's, and Tom Roy's campaigns.  This year, we hope to get more volunteers and make an entire Republican crew!  If interested, please contact John Milne at 755-6971.  Arson Watch even feeds the volunteers! 

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual poverty report.  They declared that 46.2 million persons, or roughly one in seven Americans, were poor in 2010. What their report doesn't say is what it really means to be poor in America.

Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield have used the government's own facts and figures to dig deeper. The results have some surprises, namely the living conditions of those defined as poor by the government are much different than the destitute conditions of homelessness and hunger that are part of the popular image. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau: 

• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning 
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks 
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television 
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers 
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation 
• 43 percent have Internet access 
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television 
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo

Of course, there are the truly destitute out there and they need our help.  What this mostly tells us is that the federal government's definition of "poor" is poor.  As with most programs, the anti-poverty programs just do not perform as intended and that is one of the best arguments for moving such functions back down to state and local governments and private charities.