The Kalamazoo River: Where brown people clean up black gold

by: Eric B.

Tue Aug 31, 2010 at 19:15:11 PM EDT

Appeals court throws RMGN of 2010 off ballot

by: Eric B.

Tue Aug 31, 2010 at 12:45:53 PM EDT

Detroit News: Hate the player, not the game

by: Eric B.

Mon Aug 30, 2010 at 11:51:46 AM EDT

The Detroit News favors the current judicial selective system except when it produces Democratic-backed judges.

The surprise resignation of Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver and the simultaneous appointment of Alton Davis by Gov. Jennifer Granholm is the result of cynical maneuvering by the justice and governor.

The editorial itself is hardly notable except when viewed through the prism of the sum-total reaction from the Right since Weaver last week essentially declared that her seat isn't their real estate to dispose of as they please. At least the News didn't call for an investigation.

What is notanble is that their preferred course of action to deal with it is to essentially do nothing. Perhaps in the end, this is a tacit admission that despite the years of bitter in-fighting on the state's high court, which has turned the thing into a national joke, that Betty Weaver found a way to go out in a style they are forced to admire. Just as conservatives are recycling some of the same old tactics to delegitimize a Democratic president, and just as they continue to press the same tired and discredited talking points on most issues, they hope to get a chance for their own bit of the Weaver treatment after Rick Michigan presumably marches triumphantly to Lansing in November.

AV ballot return rates in the primary

by: Grebner

Mon Aug 30, 2010 at 01:50:13 AM EDT

I have clients who hyperventilate ten weeks before each election, calling me with the rumor that somewhere, some County Clerk has passed at least some AV ballots to the local Clerk, ready to be mailed.  "WE'VE GOT TO GET OUR MAIL OUT!" they scream at me.

I've never been able to convince anybody that - even if the rumor was true, and applied to the Clerks within the correct district (which is never the case) - that most people don't vote their ballots right away.

I've learned not to fight it.  Once I recognize the signs of candidate-psychosis, I know that facts don't matter, advice may be asked but is always ignored, and the only relief will come a few hours after the close of the polls.

For the few people who care about this subject, I have assembled some additional tables to ignore, based on the dates ballots were requested and returned in the August primary.  The data is derived from the Secretary of State's AV ballot tracking system, which is generally correct, but has its share of inconsistencies and glitches.

Open Thread: Convention Weekend

by: ScottyUrb

Sun Aug 29, 2010 at 13:34:43 PM EDT

First, the eye candy:

Wow, we Democrats are good-looking! :-D

We've also nominated these great Democrats for statewide office (Davis, Bauer, and McNamara are incumbents):

• Supreme Court: Justice Alton Davis and Judge Denise Langford Morris
• State Board of Education: Elizabeth Bauer and Lupe Ramos-Montigny
• U-M Regents: Paul Brown and Greg Stephens
• MSU Trustees: Colleen McNamara and Dennis Denno
• WSU Governors: Ed Bruley and Brenda Moon

We have nominated the strongest team we have nominated in years. Each of them is very well qualified to take the offices for which they have been nominated. With these fine folks ready to lead Michigan, and with an excellent crop of Democratic candidates for local races, all of us can very easily support Team Blue with our time, talents, and (if you are able) treasures!

So here's to being Fired Up and Ready to Go!

Also:

• To all of you who are against tax increases and want government to live within its means (however you define that), remember that both Lansing and Southfield have maintained top credit ratings without layoffs or tax increases. What do you say we give their mayors a promotion? :-)
• While the Democratic Convention went smoothly, the Party of No had some chaos at their convention - highlighted by an effort by teabaggers to nominate Bill Cooper for LG instead of Brian Calley.
• Republicans have nominated career politician Ruth Johnson to lose to Jocelyn Benson and longtime career politician Bill Schuette (yes, the one who lost to Carl Levin for US Senate - 20 years ago!) to lose to David Leyton. Too bad about Johnson - I was hoping for Michelle McManus, and here's why.
• Big shout-out to the College Dems at my alma mater, Central Michigan University! A week ago they registered more than 500 voters at MAINstage, which is the big beginning-of-the-year student organization fair/concert/shindig. Thursday they had a volunteer/voter-reg rally on campus, starring the Honorable Mayor of Lansing/48th Governor of the state of Michigan. Then yesterday they had a strong showing at the MDP Youth Caucus.
• And can I just point out that U-M was better represented at the Youth Caucus than was MSU? That, and the fact that Virg's daughters have gone to U-M and CMU, and the fact that the Republican convention was held at the Breslin, and the fact that blue is both a U-M color and a Democratic color, tells you all you need to know about why U-M, and not State, is the 2nd-best school in Michigan, behind the one in Mt. Pleasant! (You know  I had to get in a dig about State! :-D)
• THE LIONS WON! They're on a 2-game winning streak! Now if only these games counted!
• UPDATE: Lance Enderle is our nominee for Congress in the 8th! Our long, local nightmare is over! (h/t brainwrap in the comments)

Ignore the lamestream media, we've got Dyspathy

by: Eric B.

Sun Aug 29, 2010 at 12:10:42 PM EDT

Up until yesterday, I didn't see much need for Twitter. Then, I downloaded Tweetdeck, loaded up a couple of hashtags from yesterday's Republican Party convention (since they're attempt to livestream the thing mysteriously failed after the convention started really late and really loud thanks to the teabaggers), and followed it there. Oh, and by following Joe Munem's Facebook status updates and photos (and this morning, I again see very little need for Twitter).

Most of the stories coming out of the conventions, I think, really failed to distill the things into coherent, workable narratives. That's why we have blogs, which gave birth to Woodward's Friend. Thank you, Jeebus.

So, in the spirit of Martin Luther King (who would obviously recognize a services tax as exactly like Jim Crow in everyway), the teabaggers nominated their own LG candidate. Some guy who finished fourth a Congressional primary. Fourth. Ok, sure, but teabagger hero Bill Cooper is a real conservative. Cooper is also a businessman, not a politician. Which means, unlike Brian Calley, he can understand the Rick Michigan plan.

At this point, someone explained to Cooper that he’d lose this fight, and would be branded as the kind of fringe lunatic barely welcome in the Michigan Taxpayers Party. That’s when Cooper quit the race like Sarah Palin quit being governor of Alaska. That made the teabaggers love Bill Cooper even more! Because our founding principles are based on quitting England. Quitting something is literally the most Constitutional thing an American can do.

What I didn't steal were paragraphs bracketing that selection. You'll have to follow the link to read those for yourself, sunshine. But, still, it's true ... Bill Cooper was going to be nominated, then pulled out, then called for unanimous support for Brian Calley, which led the teabaggers to loudly boo someone. The Freep summed this all up by saying that Rick Michigan's L.G. candidate was barely ratified.

Meanwhile, he gives an entirely different post to the wholly boring Democratic convention. How boring? No hashtags in my Tweetdeck feed. Still, it was a democratic act of charity to provide equal coverage to something so comparatively bland.

Oh and famous nerd Rick “Michigan” Snyder is a CEO. That stands for Chief Executive Outsourcer. Just in case the tuk r jibs crowd was still undecided. Ok look, Michigan Democrats, the outsourcing attack worked on Dick Devos, not because anyone cared about outsourcing, but because it was a clever way to remind people that Dick Devos runs Amway.

As I say so often to myself, when no one else can hear, "Ahhh, Dyspathy ... eases the pain." As much as I wish people would stop comparing things as if one thing is exactly like that other thing that happened just a couple of years ago so's we could all pretend that we have an institutional memory extending back more than 5 minutes, I also wish people would stop seizing on narratives that make little sense instead of narratives that make a good deal more sense. Dick DeVos didn't lost four years ago because people thought he created jobs in China. He lost four years ago because everyone hates Amway, and because Dick DeVos has no charisma.

Nolan Finley references figment of imagination as fact

by: Eric B.

Sun Aug 29, 2010 at 11:48:22 AM EDT

The headline ought not suprise anyone, since Nolan Finley is less objective journalist and more partisan cheerleader, but these three paragraphs are notable.

The more likely scenario is that Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence ended up as Virg Bernero's running mate because everyone else he asked said no. Democrats began the search for a lieutenant governor candidate with specific qualifications in mind.

They wanted an African-American, preferably from Detroit, because blacks were upset at being passed over for the attorney general and secretary of state ticket spots. They also wanted a moderate with strong appeal to the business community to temper Bernero's anti-corporate rants and union obligations.

But with this weekend's state convention upon them and a stack of "no thank you" notes from other possible choices, they took Lawrence, who had been vigorously campaigning for the nomination.

So, he creates a scenario that he calls "most plausible" (which isn't true, by the way, since Alma Wheeler Smith was actively campaigning for the spot, which means that not everyone else turned the job down), and then references it as fact a mere two paragraphs later (a fact that, since there was at least one other person "vigorously campaigning" for the slot, is untrue).

It would just be a fairly minor act of wishful thinking, except that it helps to focus on the overall picture of what Finley has produced, personal rancor that overcomes his personal ability to apply nuanced thought.

Note, for example, his reference to Bernero's anti-business platform. Anyone who has paid attention longer than 13 seconds knows that Bernero is not campaigning against business. This is a standard trope of the Republican Party, which any competent journalist would look past. Finley, however, repeats it even though it makes no sense.

First off, a little clarification on what Bernero is campaigning on. Bernero has repeatedly said that Wall Street got billions in federal bailout money, and has since refused to release the money for loans to small businesses ... the heart of Main Street.  Indeed, Bernero's proposal to create a state bank is predicated on the idea that such a venture would be available for businesses not able to get money from frozen credit markets to -- wait for it, wait for it -- build or expand (anti-business, that).

Such a thing, when proposed, received the laudits of the state's Small Business Association. It was part of why he received backing during his bid from a couple of chambers of commerce around the state; and is on top of the thing that vaulted Bernero to national noteriety, which was his public defense of Michigan's automakers at a time when it was very popular to disparage them as relics from a bygone age that didn't know yet that they were dead.

Finley goes on to quote his usual bag of unidentified sources, perhaps many of them the same people who claimed that the unions had kidnapped and replaced Bernero's entire campaign staff (it's one thing to work closely with, it's another thing entirely to have pulled off a silent coup against) to terrify voters into not voting for Bernero (while at very close proximity saying that the GOP might indeed need to scare the dickens out of voters this November to win), to claim that unions are bolting from Virg's camp for Rick Michigan. Most persons who've been paying attention know all about Bernero's past antagonisms with Lansing-area unions. Bernero, leaders of the unions say, screwed labor over in favor of not raising taxes. It was part of the regular line of attack from unions who supported Dillon. Naturally, Finley fails to identify which unions might not back Bernero come November, and it can be left to deduce that he doesn't know because no one would tell him or because they'd wind up being the usual unions that wind up endorsing the more conservative candidate in the first place.

Added fun ... Bernero's anti-business platform at work.

"Main Street people, Main Street businesses, small businesses that are the backbone of our communities. Nobody knows it better than the mayors of our communities," Bernero said as he introduced Lawrence, the part-time mayor of her city of 78,000 since 2001.

By the way, if you talk to most people at local economic development agencies, they'll be up front about telling you that the greatest potential for creating jobs comes from small and medium-sized businesses, not big corporate firms.

The price of platform by mindless talking points

by: Eric B.

Sat Aug 28, 2010 at 11:27:38 AM EDT

What makes Rick Haglund such a valuable business writer to read? He appears to understand that economic development is something more than an Underpants Gnomes strategy (craft policy, ?, have growth). There is stuff that happens at the state level, and there is stuff that has to take place at the local level. For instance:

Tax incentives are like mother's milk to local economic developers who use them to attract new businesses and jobs.

Hardly a significant new investment is made in their communities without the use of a property tax abatement or business tax credit, local economic developers tell me.

I think he's maybe touched on this point before, where one political party -- which claims to be the pro-business party -- loudly and vocally shouts about the need to get rid of things like the MEDC and tax incentives. There's sensible reform of tax incentives, and there is mindless shouting about a tool local economic development agencies use to lure new businesses or business expansions to their community.

The unintended consequence of that is that while it sounds great for the Lansing-centric crowd, it sends a message to local communities that the state might not actually be open for business. You can kill the economy with a job-killed tax surcharge, or you can kill it by sending a message to people looking to invest that your business environment is not entirely stable.

The flip side of this, the alternative to luring new businesses, is something Haglund wrote about a couple of weeks ago -- economic gardening. Put simply, it is planting the seed for a new local business and helping the business owner into a thriving concern. It's based on what Littleton, Colo., did after all its rocket-building facilities shut down.

Most local economic development agencies do both, using tax incentives to attract outsiders and nurturing local entrepreneurs, using a veritable alphabet soup of programs and tools.  Rick Michigan's comments to me suggest that he's down with tax incentives, but leans more towards economic gardening. Virg, as a working mayor, appears to have embraced both. What would be helpful, and ought to be provided to voters, is a thorough examination of where both candidates stand on how to work with local economic development agencies to grow businesses that produce jobs rather than allowing things to be hijacked by overly simplified recitation of talking points.

Tea Party group accused of violating tax exempt status

by: Eric B.

Sat Aug 28, 2010 at 10:34:33 AM EDT

The accusations come from the Democratic Party, so if anything happens expect a lot of hooting and hollering about Democrats using the IRS to exact revenge against opponents. IT'S JUST LIKE NIXON!

WASHINGTON — Democrats are charging that commercials financed by an increasingly prominent conservative foundation with ties to the Tea Party violate the foundation’s tax-exempt status.

Presumably, these are the ads being aired in Mark Schauer's district, which would have you believe that Nancy Pelosi is really the president. They're over the top, loud, and targeted towards an low information audience that at the same time is perpetually aggravated by forces it doesn't understand.

Shouting for the sake of being heard

by: Eric B.

Sat Aug 28, 2010 at 09:58:33 AM EDT

Apparently, the teabaggers want to wag the Snyder.

NORTON SHORES -- Norton Shores businessman Bill Cooper, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress this year, is expected to be a wild-card nominee for Michigan's lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket.

The state delegates of the Tea Party of West Michigan are set to nominate Cooper for the state's second-highest executive post today at the Republican convention at the Breslin Center in East Lansing.

It's smart if you can pull it off. If not, you're just sending the message that your juice is mostly just the stuff of smoke and mirrors.

Update! ...  Reports from the convention floor have it that angry shouting preceded Cooper withdrawing his name, which prompted more anger. In other news, GOP attempts to livestream convention fail due to "technical difficulties."

And now, a word from our sponsor

by: Eric B.

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 09:49:52 AM EDT

Update! ... Singh is out, IMs Thomas Morgan.

Thomas Morgan and the Ingham County Young Democrats have sponsored this site the last three days, and hope that through this that delegates to this weekend's Democratic Party convention will support Sam Singh's candidacy for the MSU Board of Trustees. Thanks Thomas Morgan, for supporting this site, and thanks to everyone who has supported it in the past (I swear, I'll get that list updated one of these days; but, not today ... I've got a garden plot in need of serious attention).

If you're interested in supporting this site, please e-mail me at ebaerren@gmail.com.

Gongwer: It's Brenda Lawrence

by: PerfectStormer

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 14:15:05 PM EDT

If you're the kind of person who doesn't trust those shady blogs and wants perspective from the Real Media, here's an article from the Freep. It says pretty much what I'm about to say here.

<dons Captain Obvious hat>

<doffs Captain Obvious hat>

Discuss amongst yourselves...

So, about that independent, non-partisan Tea Party movement

by: Eric B.

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 13:50:44 PM EDT

We all knew all along that the non-partisan angle to the Tea Party movement was a bunch of hooey. I'm glad we're finally allowed to admit it in public without a lot of yelling about how people are trying to pigeonhole those people as Republican activists.

Michigan tea party supporters flocked to Republican party meetings across the state this month and won several hundred delegate seats for the Saturday state convention, including Weiser's. Now, the activists are positioned for an attempt to push the Michigan GOP further to the right and put hard-core conservatives on November's general election ballot.

This is probably why Anne Norlander's latest campaign video claims that she is qualified to be Secretary of State because she possesses a CCW, and promises to stand up to ACORN, an organization that for intents and purposes no longer exists.

Russ Harding is a contemptible twit

by: Eric B.

Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 11:52:29 AM EDT

I was actually going to headline this post, "Russ Harding is an ignorant dumbshit," because that's really the most accurate way to describe things. But, we all know the score ... when it comes to demagoguing an entire swath of people or using a vulgarity on the Internets, every Very Serious Person knows that what really coarsens us as a people is the word "shit." So, instead you got what you got, and I'm guessing that calling him a twit will in some corners be seen as a greater crime than Harding's piece, "Environmentalism is a threat to liberty."

So, why are we calling names this morning? Well, it's not so much calling names as it is offering an honest assessment of the things the man writes. Through those things, Harding has issued a public declaration that he is willing to speak out on things about which he has virtually no demonstrable understanding. I suppose it ought not concern us terribly that the man who once ran the state's chief environmental stewardship agency doesn't understand a related politcal movement, since his agency wasn't tasked with representing merely environmentalists but all the state's citizens. However, it is telling that during a tenure to running such a thing that you'd expect him to have enough contact with activists that he would at least have familiarity with their motivations. I guess not.

Let us start with a question ... is environmentalism a threat to liberty? Since environmentalism is a form of political expression arrived at freely in a free society, the reflexive answer is that it is not. However, let's look at the case Harding makes in arriving at the contrary opinion.

The Berlin wall came down and communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, but the socialist ideology is alive and well and has found a new home in the modern day environmental movement. The environmental movement has been likened to a watermelon — green on the outside and red on the inside. Most environmentalists would not consider themselves socialists, much less communists, but the policies they support in the name of saving the planet almost always sacrifice individual liberty for central government control.

A great many things have been said about environmentalism, starting with that is substitutes the planet itself for God. There is also this, that the environmental movement is a socialist movement. We've discussed this here from time to time, so excuse if we wind up rehashing old history. However, it is worth noting that this notion surfaced shortly after the end of the Soviet Union in a book written by Pat Robertson. You are free to consider whether Robertson possesses the proper sense of authority and familiarity with the topic to make such a claim, and whether persons who repeat things said by such a figure are based on informed opinion or whether they are just repeating slurs against people they don't like.

For it to be true, however, that green is the new red, it has to be asked whether green simply materialized after red disappeared, or whether green appeared long before red. If that is the case, it has to be asked whether green and red occupied the same space while existing at the same time.

The answer to that is a matter of simple history. Green existed long before red disappeared, some 100 years to offer a simple estimation. Green -- environmentalism -- was preceded by conservationism. Coincidentally, red appeared a short time before. But, before jaws drop and flimsy conclusions are reached, the two appeared on different continents. Red, as we all know, first appeared in industrialized Europe, a reaction to industrialism by people advocating on behalf of the working poor. Environmentalism at that time was known as conservationism, and came to us all as a gift from a robust democracy called the United States. That is, what Russ Harding has called a threat to freedom came from the same people who's freedom he says are in danger.

more...

UPDATED: SoS relents; Kande is out, way is cleared for Lance Enderle!

by: Brainwrap

Thu Aug 26, 2010 at 18:45:09 PM EDT

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!

The Michigan Secretary of State's office has confirmed that Kande Ngalamulume is finally OFF the MI-08 ballot!! Read the details--as well as the explanation for the delay on the part of the SoS office.

In any event, it's official: Kande is now off the ballot, and the path has been cleared for Lance Enderle to replace him.