After some Senate Democrats failed to give immediate effect to some budget bills they opposed — preventing them from going to the governor — Senate Republicans put forth a revenue bill.

Some Democrats have said they want revenues as part of a solution, but most said they didn’t want to see a vote on a broad tax like the one Republicans put forth: an income tax increase.  (Revenue proposals have included ticket taxes or a bottled water deposit.) The vote failed overwhelmingly, with only two Senators supporting it.

After the votes, the party leaders in the Senate held dueling press conferences. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop accused Democrats of disrupting the deal and said the governor was to blame.

Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi called the income tax vote “crap” and said his caucus simply wouldn’t go along with an all-cuts budget solution.

Prusi said he doesn’t think Bishop will put up a continuation or temporary budget for an immediate effect vote, sending it to the governor.

The Senate would have roughly 50 minutes now to do that.

In the House, some members have said the plan is to push remaining budgets through before midnight — even the tougher ones like K-12 education and general government, which includes revenue sharing to cities.

But if the budgets pass the House, they would still need to pass the Senate.

Rick and I are still in Lansing — we’ll be here until at least midnight.

Follow twitter.com/tonytagliavia for the little bits and pieces coming out…

lots of little bits and pieces coming out — follow me on twitter (twitter.com/tonytagliavia)

The state Senate has passed the corrections bill — it’s now taking up the Michigan State Police budget. The chamber failed to adopt the MSP budget on the first vote; it’s now being reconsidered.

House Speaker Andy Dillon is now on the floor (9:49pm) talking with Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop.

There’s some word on the Senate floor that we may enter the new fiscal year — which starts at midnight — with all the final budgets passed except for K-12 education.

K-12 is one of the most contentious budgets because it would cut $218 in funding for every district for every student they teach. In Grand Rapids Public Schools, the cut would exceed $4 million. Kalamazoo and Forest Hills would see cuts over $2 million and Portage and Kentwood would each see a roughly $2 million cut.

The K-12 budget bill was put up for a vote in the House this afternoon but it didn’t have the votes to pass.

Which brings us back to the talk in the Senate.

Having no K-12 budget could be feasible, people on the Republican side of the Senate are saying, because state payments to schools aren’t due until later in October. The state would have several weeks, in theory, to figure out a school budget and how to fund it.

But a spokeswoman for House Democrats said the idea wasn’t really part of the plan in her chamber.

We’ll keep our eye on it.

–Tony

Senate just voted to go into recess until 7:30 p.m.

We’re waiting to see if the Senate will pass the continuation budget on to the governor, which would give lawmakers another 30 days to arrive at a final 2009-10 budget. A spokesman for the majority leader says he’d rather see work on a final budget rather than voting on continuation.

(Meanwhile, on the House side, the first attempt to pass the K-12 budget was ended after it could not get enough votes to pass.)

As far as the regular budgets, Senators are waiting to vote on the corrections and general government budgets, which will come from the House. (General government includes revenue sharing.)

The Michigan State Police budget will originate here on the Senate side.

Rick Albin and I remain at the Capitol and will keep you posted.

<– Harvest Moonrise in Galiza, Spain (from NASA).  As part of the International Year of Astronomy, the Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomical Association will be hosting nightly FREE telescope viewing tonight (Oct. 1).  The clear skies were perfect for viewing last night.  Tonight, high clouds will be moving in this afternoon, so it’ll be a race to get out early and see the Moon and Jupiter if we can through the high clouds.  If skies are already cloudy, the event will be cancelled. The moon will be 94% full tonight.  They’ll be setting up telescopes at 11 locations all over the Grand Rapids area (Calvin College, GVSU in Allendale, Celebration Cinema North & South, Northview H.S., E. Kentwood H.S., Lowell, Forest Hills East,  East G.R., 3rd Reformed Church, Rosa Park Circle).  For a complete list check out the GRAAA website.

<–click the image to enlarge.  The official death toll is up to 529, but will likely reach “the thousands”.  Another huge Earthquake has hit in Indonesia around 6:16 AM EDT Weds. Sept. 30, just off the island of Sumatra.  It was 30 miles off the coast of Padang (population 900,000 – that’s more people than actually live in the city of Detroit) .  This one has been given a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 and a depth of 49.7 miles.  At least 529 are dead and hundreds may be buried (video at link) under the debris of collapsed buildings and landslides.  Reports indicate that schools, bridges, a hospital and the roof of the main airport may have collapsed.     Here’s the geology of the quake.  There were no reports of a significant tsunami.   I’ve read several discussions by meteorologists who had predicted more earthquakes due to changes in the Earth’s angular momentum (tied to changes in the sun).  Fascinating stuff – these meteorologists are also predicting that the Earth will be in a cooling period from the latter part of this decade to about 2030.  Here’s another interesting article that makes some good points.

Here is video.  There was a major earthquake 120 miles from American Samoa in the Pacific Ocean.  The quake has been given a magnitude of 8.0.  There are at least 140 fatalities due to a tsunami (10-20 feet high and moving inland up to one mile from the beach).    At the National Park of Samoa,  offices and visitor center were destroyed and employees were among the casualties.  On the main island of Tutuila cars were swept into the ocean.  The villages of Sau Sau Beach Fale and Talamoa were destroyed.    A Tsunami WARNING was issued for at least American Somoa and New Zealand.  A Tsunami Watch was issued for Hawaii, but was been cancelled.   The earthquake was quite deep at 11.2 miles below the ocean surface.   Looks like initial time is 1:48 PM EDT, though I’m not sure of that yet.  I think I wrote in one of my recent posts that we were overdue for a major earthquake.  VIDEO (looks like a severe t-storm).  The Indonesian E-Quake of 12/26/04 was approx. magnitude 9.2.  That means it was about 10 times stronger than this one.  I’m trying to calculate how fast the tsunami moved.   Someone said it took 25 minutes to get to American Samoa (the smaller, eastern island), so I get about 250-300 mph.  Of course the tsunami slows up as it approaches the shore and the water piles up.  I know tsunamis over the open water have been clocked at 600 mph.  They are small (like a small speed bump) over deep water, and only become nasty at the shore.

Click here to enlarge image. Long-range weather forecasters (like me) monitor the water temperatures along the Equatorial Pacific Ocean.  Strategically placed buoys let us know if we are in worldwide weather patterns known as El Nino or La Nina.  Unfortunately, more than half a dozen oceanographic buoys are missing in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has dispatched a ship to find and fix the malfunctioning buoys, which are part of the 55-strong Tropical Atmosphere Ocean Array that keeps track of temperature, wind and water temperatures from Ecuador to Indonesia.  Right now we are in a weak El Nino.  Make sure you get a copy of Sunday’s G. R. Press or keep watching the blog.  I’ll be explaining a little about what a weak El Nino could mean for the coming winter.

For second week, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” tops the box office, new movies struggle

“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” overshadowed the weekend, with nearly $10 million more than new movie “Surrogates” in 2nd place, “Fame” was 3rd, and “Pandorum” was a distant 6th.

Overall, the weekend was down 5% from last weekend and with $82.77 million, it ranks as the 2nd lowest total revenue of 2009 (September 4-6 was $81.12 million).

 TOP MOVIES AT WEEKEND BOX OFFICE (estimated results):
1. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” – $24.60 million
(2nd week, was #1 last week, lost 19% of audience from last week)

2. “Surrogates” – $15.00 million (1st week)

3. “Fame” (2009) – $10.03 million (1st week)

4. “The Informant!” – $6.92 million
(2nd week, was #2 last week, lost 34% from last week)

5. “Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself” – $4.75 million
(3rd week, was #3 last week, lost 52% of audience from last week)

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