Confession is good for the soul…even for political reporters who never make mistakes.

    Correspondents in this town made a huge mistake as they missed a monster story even though it was right under everyone's nose.

    You would think that with 35 hot shot reporters roaming the halls of government that some fool would have discovered the Reform Michigan Government Now movement, but no one did.

    Score it Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer one and the capitol press corps a fat goose egg.

    Recall that Brewer and company gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to re-invent state government by basically handing the keys of government over to his party.

    It was sold to petition signers as an attempt to reduce legislative paychecks which is why everybody and his uncle signed one.  What Brewer didn't tell the unsuspecting public that was duped into signing, is that the nine-page document did much more than that.

     Brewer knew if the media caught on to what was going on his effort would be doomed.  The public would have been alerted to the scheme and it would have died on the vine, but since the media never found out until the petitions were about to be turned in, Brewer was successful.

     Reporters had a chance to uncover this.  In fact the person writing to you right now, stood on the front lawn of the capitol and watched a person gathering names. A question was asked and the answer was this is the Reform Michigan Government Now petition drive.

     The answer was true but misleading.  The reporter concluded it was a part time legislature effort which was called Reform Michigan Government…without the Now.

      Brewer added the "Now", dare we see to deliberately mislead the media.  You bet.

      It was a brilliant political gambit which eventually failed because the darn thing was unconstitutional, but Brewer has the satisfaction of having outsmarted the press corps.