{"id":3637,"date":"2021-06-04T07:31:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-04T11:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3637"},"modified":"2021-06-04T07:31:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T11:31:25","slug":"finally-something-we-can-all-agree-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3637","title":{"rendered":"Finally Something We Can All &#8230; Agree On"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JPA294.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"428\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JPA294.jpg\" alt=\"Finally Something We Can All ... Agree On\" class=\"wp-image-3638\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JPA294.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/JPA294-300x229.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a pretty straight path to the cartoon this week. I was reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freep.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2021\/06\/01\/michigan-secretary-of-state-hiring-appointments\/7493178002\/\">an article in the\u00a0<em>Detroit Free Press<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about newly proposed bills in the state legislature to\u00a0use $25 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds to staff up at the Secretary of State offices. Lengthy closings because of the pandemic\u00a0created a backlog of Michiganders needing to update licenses, register vehicles, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the idea is to use one-time money that doesn&#8217;t come out of our budget to solve a problem that affects nearly all of us. If ever there was something we can all agree on, thought I, this was it. But then I read on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems it was a couple of Democrats (Rep. Stephanie Young, D-Detroit, Rep. Julie Brixie, D-Meridian Township) behind the bills. I would not have been surprised if it had been two Republicans, but apparently&nbsp;it matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bills are written with the forward-looking objective of improving service. The SOS offices would&nbsp;expand on&nbsp;the current appointment system, aiming to build flexibility and efficiency into the system as a hedge against future disruptions. Republicans would prefer to simply open offices back up with the pre-pandemic take-a-number system. You know, the one that pretty much everyone (including the workers) loathe. Why? I don&#8217;t know. It could be that they are still not totally onboard with preventing sickness and death. It could be that it simply wasn&#8217;t their idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See? This&nbsp;is why we can&#8217;t have nice (or&nbsp;even simple) things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a pretty straight path to the cartoon this week. I was reading an article in the\u00a0Detroit Free Press\u00a0about newly proposed bills in the state legislature to\u00a0use $25 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds to staff up at the Secretary of State offices. Lengthy closings because of the pandemic\u00a0created a backlog of Michiganders needing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3639,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions\/3639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}