don't be in the bottom 5% if you don't want your tender young children ruthlessly cannibalized...,

democracy-tree |  Well, they did it.

The Michigan Senate passed the Education Achievement Authority bill tonight. As is typical of these cowardly GOP lawmakers, they blasted HB-4369 out of the Senate Education Committee after it sat languishing there with virtually no discussion for eight solid months.

This form of anal-retentive Republican lawmaking in Michigan seems to come in painful episodic waves of explosive legislative diarrhea that occur mostly in mid-December, coincidently mere hours before they race for the exits, butt cheeks tightly clenched, to go home and schmooze it up at fundraisers with lobbyists and cronies.

Gov. Snyder is eagerly poised to sign this legislation into law from the cozy den of his comfortable home in his gated community. He has been a proponent of the EAA since its inception. The legislation returns to the House on Thursday, then on to the governor.

GOP lawmakers were in such a hurry today, they recommended the bill out of committee without so much as updating the legislature.mi.gov committee reports page before ramming it through on the floor for a vote. This is hallmark of the slap-dash legislation Michigan has experienced under the Snyder administration.

Lawmakers are scheduled to wrap things up by this time tomorrow, and we can expect more legislative bowel movements before then. Their calendar allows for tentative sessions next week — not a likely occurrence though, because they’ll want to get the f#*k-outta Dodge as soon as they finish their annual shit-storm assault on democracy and civil rights.

democracy-tree |   The Michigan House adjourned without signing-off on the Senate version of the Education Achievement Authority. The lack of action came as a surprise to many who expected speedy approval in the wake of State Superintendent Mike Flanagan’s statement last week that the EAA will be expanding from 15 schools to approximately 25 as early as January.

The Senate version of HB-4369, approved this week, differed slightly from what the House passed back in March of 2013. Senators stipulated that no expansion could occur until the 2015-16 school year — effectively putting the brakes on the state’s rush to seize low-performing districts from local control.

Rep. Lisa Posthumus-Lyons (R-86), the original sponsor of the House version told the Associated Press:

“The members haven’t had much of a chance to look at it. That’s OK. The beautiful part about this December is it’s not lame duck. It’s the end of a quarter, not the end of the game.”

The Senate version also removed the cap on how many schools may be in the Authority — a condition which didn’t seem to worry Lyons:

“Don’t be in the bottom 5 percent of schools if you don’t want to be in the EAA.”

The House is expected to revisit the legislation as early as January. Lawmakers will probably take the deal the Senate has offered considering it took them nine months to get a vote on the amended legislation in 2013 — House proponents of EAA expansion may not wish to take their chances on sending it back to the Senate.