Michigan Senate OKs sharp gas tax hikes to fix roads:
"LANSING, Mich. (Detroit Free Press) -- The Michigan Senate voted Thursday to sharply increase gas taxes over the next four years to potentially raise more than $1 billion annually to fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges.
The bill from Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, was passed quickly and without debate, by a 23-14 vote, after a number of false starts earlier in the day, during a lame-duck session.
Richardville told reporters the measure passed Thursday could still change during the remainder of the lame-duck session and it's still possible voters could be asked to approve a 1 percentage point hike in the state's 6% sales tax as an alternative.
The Senate took "a big step to show people we're serious," Richardville said. "If you've got an alternative, we're going to take a look at it."
In the latest version, the wholesale tax would begin at 9% on April 1, 2015 and gradually increase to 15.5% on Jan. 1, 2018.
Based on a wholesale gas price of $2.50 a gallon, that would result in a gas price hike of 17 cents a gallon when fully implemented.
There are measures in the bill to cap price increases if the wholesale price of gas spikes."
Though his staff worked to try and pretend that Johnson was joking, Johnson seemed dead-serious and he made his assertion in the middle of a committee hearing- a time not often used for jokes."
"Fox Business Network anchor Melissa Francis revealed on Friday that she was “silenced” by CNBC, her former employer, when she questioned the “math of Obamacare” on the air.
"After hearing the Vermonter’s worries, Gruber responds, “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?”
"Remember that part in the Second Amendment that deals with what happens to firearms once someone passes away? “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed… until they die. Then the police can swoop in and snag grandpa’s service pistol.”
"In a story just breaking, The UK Daily Mail reported the wounding of Jihadi John from a US airstrike on a secret bunker meeting of ISIS high command’ 
DNAInfo reported:
The bill from Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, was passed quickly and without debate, by a 23-14 vote, after a number of false starts earlier in the day, during a lame-duck session.
"Rand Paul didn’t hold back in a hearing on Thursday hearing, confronting P. David Lopez who has been nominated to serve as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission new general counsel. Paul used the hearing to lambaste the idea that the EEOC can investigate and punish businesses where a formal complaint hasn’t even been lodged against the business.
Yet another questionable video of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber has emerged, this time of Gruber bragging about how the people behind Romneycare managed to “rip off the feds.”
The administration and Gruber will deny that they are out to change employer-based health insurance, Weinstein asserted. But he also cautioned that you cannot rely on what they say in speeches — you must also listen to what they are saying at the universities, at economic forums, and among themselves.
