{"id":4356,"date":"2025-09-05T08:26:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T12:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=4356"},"modified":"2025-09-12T09:19:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:19:02","slug":"not-helping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=4356","title":{"rendered":"Not Helping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/JPA513.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"410\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/JPA513.jpg\" alt=\"Political Cartoon: Not Helping\" class=\"wp-image-4357\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/JPA513.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/JPA513-300x220.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You may be fine with House Speaker Matt Hall&#8217;s methods and his breaking rules, laws, and norms to play a game of chicken with the State Budget. You may be inclined to give Governor Gretchen Whitmer grace for not delivering on her signature, high-profile campaign promise for a long-term fix of the damn roads. But both cases aren&#8217;t exactly building voter confidence in our system of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s a problem. Our state government is designed to work best when voters are encouraged and engaged. When politicians operate in a &#8220;the end justifies the means&#8221; mode or when politicians make promises and don&#8217;t keep them, that feeds cynicism and negativity among the voters. Which in turn attracts politicians that feed off that cynicism and negativity. Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not good. Worse, our current federal government is without a doubt several generations ahead on that cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may be fine with House Speaker Matt Hall&#8217;s methods and his breaking rules, laws, and norms to play a game of chicken with the State Budget. You may be inclined to give Governor Gretchen Whitmer grace for not delivering on her signature, high-profile campaign promise for a long-term fix of the damn roads. But [&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-4356","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\/4356","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=4356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4358,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4356\/revisions\/4358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}