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Essay: Resurget Cineribus - 3.12.10
Jack Lessenberry's Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:29pm
It's been a week of embarrassment for Detroit, thanks to two former leaders and convicted felons. But Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry thinks we may be looking at this the wrong way.
I haven't talked to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing this week, but I felt like calling him to say, "I feel your pain." For ten months, he's been scrambling to try and get a handle on his city's fractured finances and repair its shattered public image.
In the long run, of course, these are two related problems. For years now, Detroit has been the city people were proud of not being from. First, it was "Murder City" in the 1970s, then a poster child for racial, unemployment and poverty problems.
Detroit recovered a little respect in the 1990s. But then followed the Kwame Kilpatrick years. Detroit's swaggering, flamboyant "hip-hop" mayor gave the city a new black eye. Nearly two years ago he finally resigned, did a few months time, and was banished to a job in Texas. But now it seems as if he is back in some Detroit courtroom every other day, behaving outrageously.
Last year around Thanksgiving, Mayor Bing told me he winces every time Kilpatrick was in the news. If so, last week must have been the equivalent of several pulled hamstrings.
The disgraced mayor was in court not once but twice, this time with a high-priced, loud-mouthed PR man. Worse, he'll be back week after next, to find out if he's going back to jail.
Monica Conyers, the former city council member, was in court too. When a federal judge finally sentenced her for her part in a bribery scheme, she unleashed a temper tantrum and said she would refuse to go to jail. Good luck with that.
And if that wasn't enough, at week's end the mayor's mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, was summoned before a grand jury for unspecified reasons.
None of this is likely to make people want to move to Detroit. Except that, guess what. I think the media is missing the real story here, which is that Detroiters, by and large, finally get it. Their city has horrible economic problems that are a legacy and function of the post-industrial past.
Many of its remaining citizens are poor, poorly educated and are desperate for jobs and better lives. But they seem to be rejecting the irrationality of the past. Last fall they elected a mayor who is a man of integrity.
Having made money in business, Dave Bing is refusing to take a salary as he struggles to help out his city.
Voters also elected a city council which seems to consist largely of grown-ups, and picked a commission to rewrite the city's badly flawed charter.
Currently, city elections are held in a bizarre manner that encourages the election of people with famous names.
The system is working. There are those who think Detroit's problems have to do with race, though they know they can't say so. But black prosecutors and juries went after and convicted the corrupt mayor, and I couldn't find a single person in town yesterday who had anything good to say about Monica Conyers.
Detroit has an official city motto that most of its residents don't even know. It's in Latin, but the English translation is this: We hope for better things. It will arise from the ashes.
Believe it or not, Detroit is trying to do just that. And we in the rest of the state have a whole lot to gain if our biggest city manages to succeed.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
UPDATE: AFL-CIO endores Bernero for Gov
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 2:10pm
Lansing based Democratic consultant Joe DiSano says the Michigan AFL-CIO has voted to endorse Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero for governor.
DiSano posted the news on his Facebook page at about 12:45. In an e-mail exchange with Michigan Messenger, DiSano said he found out from “a source in the room.” He says to expect an announcement about 3:30 p.m. Friday.
Former Bernero Mayoral Campaign Manager Patrick MacAlvey followed up DiSano’s post an hour later, writing on his Facebook page:
“Virg Bernero received the MI AFL-CIO endorsement today–Fantastic news!”
And the AFL-CIO responded to Michigan Messenger inquires by inviting us to a 3:30 p.m. conference call.
The Associate Press is now reporting that the endorsement is a done deal. From the Traverse City Record Eagle:
The Michigan AFL-CIO has endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero, igniting a battle for union endorsements in the race.
The state AFL-CIO represents over 600,000 active and retired members in 59 unions throughout Michigan, including the United Auto Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
This news comes the day after House Speaker Andy Dillon announced he had picked up the endorsement of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council (MBCTC). Bernero is also rumored to be in line for picking up the UAW endorsement. State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, who is also seeking the nomination, has not picked up any labor endorsements to date.
Such labor endorsements are key in a Democratic primary because they come with cash and most importantly people power. The unions will mobilize members to do phone calls, door-to-door and other campaign related work.
Calls to the Bernero campaign were not immediately returned.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Gov. candidates to get mere pittance in matching funds
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 1:15pm
The Associated Press reports that those candidates for governor who were counting on matching funds from the State Campaign Fund to help their campaign are going to be sorely disappointed in the level of support they get. The money in that fund has been seriously depleted and there is little left over for the candidates:
Instead of getting up to $2 for every $1 they receive from small donors, candidates will get 26 cents per dollar this year.
State lawmakers took $7.2 million from the State Campaign Fund to balance the fiscal 2007 budget. Now the fund has $2.1 million to divide among candidates.
This could be a particular problem for Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who is polling at or near the top of the Republican candidates but has trailed in fund raising.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Conyers appeals sentence, which could have been harsher
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 1:10pm
Former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers has filed an appeal of the 37 month sentence she received earlier this week after pleading guilty to accepting bribes in exchange for her vote on a sludge hauling contract. But the Detroit News reports that the sentence could have been even worse, as the judge had initially wanted an even longer prison term.
Monica Conyers didn’t like the 37-month prison sentence a judge handed her Wednesday, but it may have been three months lighter than planned.
U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn began the sentencing hearing by saying he had accepted the government’s recommendation to consider other bribes Conyers is accused of taking, beyond the cash she took in connection with the $1.2 billion sewage sludge contract the Detroit City Council awarded to Synagro Technologies Inc. of Texas in 2007.
Considering that “relevant conduct” — crimes Conyers has been accused of but not charged with — would push Conyers’ sentencing guidelines higher than the 30-37 months calculated by the probation department, Cohn said.
Cohn backed off and agreed to leave the sentencing guidelines at 30-37 months after Conyers and her attorney, Steve Fishman, protested and said they wanted a hearing on the other alleged bribes, which the government presented evidence about during the recent trial of political consultant Sam Riddle, who was a top aide to Conyers. Conyers denies all of the allegations, Fishman told Cohn.
Now it remains to be seen whether an appeals court will allow Conyers to withdraw her guilty plea.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Tlaib calls for workers’ comp for undocumented workers
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 10:52am
State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat, has introduced legislation to give worker’s compensation to undocumented workers in Michigan.
“We’re only one of two states in the nation that does not allow workers that are undocumented to compensate when they are injured on the job,” WILX, the NBC affiliate in Lansing, quotes the first term lawmaker saying at a Capitol rally on Thursday. “Allowing workers’ compensation for all injured workers is a better system than allowing people to be part of a black market of undocumented workers.”
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Republicans push drug tests for Bridge Card holders
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 10:51am
House Republicans have put together legislation that they say will ferret out abuse of the program that provides food aid to 1.7 million people in Michigan, the Grand Rapids Press reports.
In a package of bills referred to the House Judiciary Committee this week, the Republican lawmakers suggest random drug testing for people who receive assistance, adding photo ID’s to the cards and requiring college students to supply information from their parents tax returns.
Critics point out that a Michigan policy to require drug testing of welfare recipients was struck down as unconstitutional in 1999 and that adding photos to Bridge Cards will raise the cost of the cards by six dollars.
The state expects to dole out $2.6 billion in food assistance this fiscal year, up from $2.1 billion last year. There has been a total $22.5 million in fraud found in the last four years, according to the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Human Services. More than $5 million of that came last year.
Rep. Roy Schmidt, D-Grand Rapids, agreed lawmakers need to be talking about issues of real importance to the state, such as jobs and properly funding education.
“I’m ready to work with my friends to clean up the kind of abuses mentioned in the bill package, but would be more enthusiastic if they would be more balanced in their approach to clean up abuses at every level of our social scale,” said Schmidt, who supported certain bills but opposed others, including random drug testing for constitutional and cost reasons.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Pwned! HIR supporters outnumber Teabaggers 5:1! - PHOTOS
Daily Kos Michigan Feed - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 8:11am
Cross-posted at Eclectablog.com
It must be tough being an MI-07 Republican these days. After organizing a "CODE RED!!!" protest against Rep. Mark Schauer, they ended up being out-numbered by Schauer supporters at least five-to-one on the day of the event.
I think this sign says it all:
Michigan OFA Director, Garrett Arwa (left) and friend
Much more with lots of photos after the jump.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Tlaib’s father says she lied on election forms
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 7:47am
State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first term legislator from Detroit who has made a name for herself by taking on Matty Moroun and his plan to build a second span of the Ambassador Bridge in her district, is now under attack from her own father, who says his daughter lied about her residency in Detroit at the time she filed to run for office. The Detroit News reports:
Now Tlaib’s father is piping in. He said his daughter misrepresented her residency when she signed an election affidavit in 2008 with the Wayne County Clerk claiming she was a citizen of Detroit.
According to that affidavit, Tlaib claimed she lived at 9123 Rathbone in Detroit. That house is owned in part by her father, Harbi Elabed, and he now says she did not live there and he was only recently made aware that she had claimed so. “She lied,” said Elabed, 61, an immigrant from Jerusalem and father of 14 who prides himself on Old World values of parental fealty. “She lied big-time to get elected. I never teach her that way. I teach her the right way. It’s my house. She didn’t live there. She lived in Dearborn in her house with her husband and boy.”
Dearborn is not a part of the 12th House District that Tlaib was elected to represent.
Her brother, however, is weighing in on his sister’s side, telling the News that Tlaib lived in that house with him for a year and saying, “My father’s crazy.”
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Cheeks Kilpatrick: I am not a target of probe
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 7:41am
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick said Thursday that neither she nor her office manager are targets of the grand jury before which they were both summoned to testify this week. She also said they are cooperating fully with the investigation. The Detroit News reports:
“Through her counsel, the congresswoman has been assured by the Department of Justice that neither she nor Andrea Bragg is a target of the grand jury,” according to a statement issued by the congresswoman’s office. “Congresswoman Kilpatrick and Ms. Bragg intend to cooperate fully and answer truthfully all appropriate questions.”
The grand jury is conducting a massive and ongoing investigation of bribery and corruption in Detroit city government. The legislator’s son, disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, is known to be a prime target of that investigation.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
State Senate looks to cut university funding
Michigan Messenger Blog - Fri, 03/12/2010 - 7:33am
The Associated Press reports that the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate is preparing to pass a bill that would but funding for Michigan’s public universities and community colleges by 3 percent — while spending $32 million to restore a tuition grant program for students who go to private schools.
This sets up a fight because Gov. Granholm’s proposed budget would hold funding for universities steady at this year’s levels.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
We Still Want To Hear From You
Michigan Coalition for Progress Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 2:56pm
Thank you to everyone who has responded to our call, asking for your help to determine what the Coalition for Progress and the legislature can do to move Michigan forward in 2010. Your responses, whether via e-mail, Facebook or Twitter have been extremely helpful.
While CFP is committed to protecting the Stem Cell ballot language and fighting for “Hire Michigan First” we want to give everyone a little more time to respond.
We want to hear from you!
For now, here are a few of the great responses that have come to us so far:
“I am a firm believer in a woman's right to choose...keep up the good fight” - Chris
“Let's fulfill our promise for being a state with great educational institutions pre-K to Universities with great infrastructure for producing new work opportunities: life sciences, green industry, advanced technologies.” - Jayne
“The number one priority for me is Tax Reform. Reform our state's tax code to shift the tax burden off business and put the burden on personal income and services.”- Rich
We’re going to take the top 6 issues that you have suggested, and create a poll to further determine what you think are the areas of greatest need in our state. Check back here for updates, and thank you in advance for all the great responses.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Michigan fails to makes eating fish safer
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 2:06pm
Over the last 25 years Michigan has made no progress in reducing the amount of mercury in fish because there has been no reduction in mercury fallout from the atmosphere, Capital News Service reports.
Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin.
According to state environmental officials coal fired power plants discharge about 4,000 pounds of mercury per year to the atmosphere, while point source wastewater facilities discharge about 20 pounds per year to surface waters.
Joe Bohr of the state’s fish contaminant monitoring program, told the News Service that we will need to create new regulations for mercury emissions before water quality will improve.
“Even if local sources are reduced, we still have mercury falling out from other sources,” Bohr said. For example, even though fly ash from coal plants is being contained, if it gets reused in cement it will re-emit mercury into the atmosphere.
Maggie Fields of Michigan‘s Office of Pollution Prevention and Compliance said that the most direct source of mercury deposits in water is dental amalgam, which dentists uses for fillings.
“There’s a lot of interconnection with mercury. For example, if dental amalgam isn’t separated from water, it may settle into a sludge on land, which will continue to emit into the atmosphere and so on.”
Under rules finalized last year, Michigan’s 19 coal-fired power plant will be required to install mercury reduction technologies by 2015.
Despite the health risks posed by mercury and other contamination in fish, it seems that more people are fishing to feed their families.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Essay: Do We Need a State Bank? - 3.11.10
Jack Lessenberry's Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 11:11am
Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero is proposing starting a State bank of Michigan. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry believes the idea is at least worth thinking about.
Virg Bernero, the mayor of Lansing and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, has an interesting idea. He would like Michigan to start a state-owned bank that could help stimulate the economy and make low-interest loans.
He put it this way, "We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs."
Apparently, the Bank of Michigan, if that’s what it would be called, would be set up in a way so as not to compete with other private and independent community banks.
Instead, his idea is that it would partner with them, and serve as what he called a "financial backstop" for their loans, though how that would work is not clear.
Bernero has said he thinks a Bank of Michigan could offer low-interest student loans and perhaps help ease the foreclosure crisis by buying up mortgage portfolios held by smaller banks.
Now while I talk to economists and have read a great deal of economic theory, I would be the first to admit that I am in no way an expert on banking. But I have some questions. Bernero is basing his concept largely on a model that now exists in North Dakota.
There, the state-owned Bank of North Dakota has existed for ninety-one years, functioning today largely as an economic development agency and an entity that helps private banks finance large projects. And it returns a nice profit to the state, averaging $30 million a year. This all sounds very good, except...
Michigan is not North Dakota. We have 10 million people; they have 640,000, far less than the population of Macomb County. Our economy is vastly different. We would need to make sure we had safeguards in place to protect the taxpayers before establishing such a bank.
My primary worry is not Susie Sophomore defaulting on her Bank of Michigan student loan. I’m more worried about a state-owned bank guaranteeing a private bank’s loans to something like Enron, leaving us taxpayers holding the bag. But I don’t want to sound too negative.
Michigan has been suffering not only from a bad economy, but from a lack of new ideas and a reluctance to try anything new.
Virgil Bernero is proposing an idea which bears examining. Frankly, what we should be doing with ideas like this is trying to find ways to make them work, rather than looking for reasons not to try.
Incidentally, it may be time to give Bernero himself a more serious look. When he jumped into the governor’s race a few weeks ago, political reporters all but openly laughed at him.
They labeled him a chronic campaigner who starts running for the next office the minute he wins the last one. His record indicates there’s some truth in that, and he did promise during last year’s mayoral race that if elected, he would not run for governor.
But today he’s one of the top two Democratic contenders. During the New Deal, FDR said his philosophy was simple. He would try something, and if that didn’t work, he would try something else.
For the next few years, that is exactly the philosophy anyone governing Michigan may need to have.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
14 year old to be tried as adult in Berrien County
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:58am
Dakotah Eliason, 14, of Niles faces a charge of open murder in the March 7 killing of his grandfather, Jesse Miles. Berrien County Prosecutor Arthur Cotter has opted to file the case in adult court, the Niles Star reports, and under Michigan’s controversial sentencing guidelines Eliason could face life in jail without possibility of parole.
Nearly 350 Michigan inmates are serving life without parole sentences for crimes that they committed while juveniles.
State Sen. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor) has introduced legislation to end mandatory life sentences for juveniles.
Last year she told Michigan Messenger, “It is inhumane and it is inappropriate to take children before their brains are fully developed and subject them to same sentence that adults would get.”
Brater’s legislation has stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion this spring on whether life without parole for juveniles is cruel and unusual punishment.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, Berrien County has one of the highest rates of juvenile life without parole sentences in Michigan.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Cheeks Kilpatrick summoned to grand jury too
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:56am
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick will now join her office manager in testifying before the federal grand jury investigating political corruption in Detroit. The legislator has now been summoned before the grand jury herself, the Detroit Free Press reports.
It is not known at this time what the subject of that testimony will be. The legislator’s son, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, is known to be a major target of the grand jury investigation, but Cheeks Kilpatrick has never before been implicated in any of his legal problems.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Kilpatrick loses bid to boot judge from case
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:53am
Disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lost his attempt to have Judge David Groner kicked off his case after Groner came down hard on him for hiding money from the court and ordered him to pay his $1 million restitution far faster than previously required. The Detroit Free Press reports:
Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny denied an attempt by lawyers for ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to disqualify another judge from Kilpatrick’s case involving allegations that he violated his probation.
Kenny ruled that Judge David Groner should remain on the case.
Kilpatrick’s attorneys had accused Groner of bias against their client and of holding private meetings with prosecutors on the case.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Grebner wins access to voter party information
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:26am
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that Practical Political Consulting, owned by Democratic Ingham County Commissioner Mark Grebner, has the right, as does anyone else, to access documents showing whether voters in the 2008 primaries voted Republican or Democrat.
In the 2008 primary elections, voters at the polls could choose which party’s primary they were going to vote in. That information was kept by the state, which had passed a law saying that this information was to be kept private — except that it would be given to the Democratic and Republican parties.
Grebner, whose company relies on selling lists that include voter preference data, filed suit based upon the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that this data — which does not include which candidate each person voted for, only which party they voted for in the primary — is not protected under any of the exemptions of that act and therefore should be available to the public. Both the trial court and now the court of appeals voted in the plaintiff’s favor.
I think the court was wrong on this and the dissent is right that this data should be covered by the privacy exemption of FOIA. This is not data about the actions of the government, which is what FOIA was intended to make more available to the public, it is data about individual voters. We go to great lengths at the polls, covering the ballot with a sheath and surrounding the polling booth with curtains, to make voting private; it should remain private.
But here’s the problem: The state was hardly in any position to argue for privacy because they had planned on giving away that data themselves, but only to the two major parties. That’s an even worse position than making it available to everyone because it’s just another way that the state protects the two major parties and keeps any third parties from ever making serious headway against them.
So the state was in the position of having to argue in favor of privacy and against it at the same time. It’s hardly a shock that the court didn’t buy that position.
You can read the full majority opinion here and the dissenting opinion here.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Before you pillory Bart Stupak...
Daily Kos Michigan Feed - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 10:09am
First off, let me say that if I could, I would grab Bart Stupak by the lapels and shake him silly for his obscene obstruction of health insurance reform and his inflicting his religious views on the rest of the country. I find it offensive and enraging and, as a Michigander, he's a tragic embarrassment to me on this issue. Period.
That said, unless the Democrats find just the right candidate, defeating him in the Democratic primary will all but hand MI-01 to the Republicans. That's the reality of MI-01, a very rural district.
I am not at all certain that Connie Saltonstall is that candidate.
Follow me after the fold to see why we need to be very careful how this gets handled and why Bart Stupak, for all the villainization going on about him right now, isn't the Biggest Baddest Dem in town.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
MI-01: Bye, Bye, Bart!! Stupak Challenger Saltonstall's campaign ramping up
Daily Kos Michigan Feed - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 8:58am
Note: This is a repost of yesterday's diary, which almost, but not quite, made it to the Rec list. Given all the buzz over Ministry of Truth's excellent diary going national, I figured that this is the perfect time to give Stupak's primary challenger as much of a shot in the arm as possible. Please rec if you think it worthy; hopefully it'll give Saltonstall as much exposure as possible, thanks!
Yesterday Tuesday, there was some exciting news in the world of Bart "Mr. Coathanger" Stupak, as local county commissioner and former schoolteacher Connie Saltonstall announced that she's going to challenge Stupak in the Democratic primary based on his anti-choice/anti-HCR stance:
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs
Cheeks Kilpatrick aide summoned to grand jury
Michigan Messenger Blog - Thu, 03/11/2010 - 7:37am
The Associated Press reports that a high-ranking staff member for Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick has been summoned to testify before a federal grand jury in Detroit investigating corruption in the city. Cheeks Kilpatrick is the mother of disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is a major target of that investigation.
It is not known whether Cheeks Kilpatrick herself is a target of that investigation, but it seems unlikely that her office manager would be called to testify unless there was at least some relationship to the corruption investigation. This could not come at a worse time for the congresswoman, now facing a primary challenge from state Sen. Hansen Clarke.
Categories: Local and Michigan Blogs