This morning, the field of avowed Democrats in the race for governor grows by one, now to include Virg Bernero. It's a moment the Republican Party was apparently preparing for, since after his last State of the City address it's spokespeople launched what might be the least effective response to any address given by any elected official in the history of the Republic.
There's good reason for that. Bernero has two things going for him that potentially could give Republicans fits this campaign cycle.
The first is his municipal experience. Bernero can tap into resentment towards ineffective state government by pointing out that a) he was just as much a victim of it as anyone, since he had a budget to balance and services to provide, and b) he's gotten through it in pretty good shape. I know some people who live in Lansing and aren't connected to the political scene who would disagree with that, but his State of the City address in which he said that they've balanced the budget without laying anyone off is a pretty big accomplishment. He's managed to do this by co-opting the GOP's biggest talking point, fiscal conservatism. In fact, the message he can lay out to people who genuinely believe government ought to tighten its belt is, "They talk, I do." At a time when most people believe that what we primarily get out of Lansing is a lot of talk, this has serious potential to speak to them.
The other, and this is perhaps the biggest thing going for him, is his message. Bernero, if I understand it correctly, is going to campaign as part of a fight to rebuild Michigan's middle class. He plans to do this by continuing what he is most closely associated with ... restoring manufacturing. His campaign will be one to challenge the assumption that we need to transition to a service economy, which he says is an economy built on nothing, and that more average people benefit more when we have an economy based on making things. And, there is also his advocacy that the loans that helped save Wall Street have not translated into help for Main Street ... that is, the big banks were bailed out, but have locked up that money rather than producing loans for small businesses. In fact, coverage following his State of the City address included laudits from the state's small business association for his work in this regard. In short, it will be a campaign waged against the excesses of Wall Street on behalf of Main Street.
To understand the potential of this, let's sum up the campaign planks of others we know to be in the race:
Andy Dillon wants you to believe that he is equipped to reform state governor, despite his role in two of the last three budget debacles.
Mike Cox wants you to believe that he can eliminate $2 billion in the state budget without also hurting essential services.
Peter Hoekstra wants you to believe that he will keep you safe from terrorists at night.
Rick Snyder Michigan wants you to believe that he can transform the state into a New Economy state.
Alma Wheeler Smith wants you to believe that the key to transformation is overhauling the state tax code and key reforms in how government operates.
Do you notice what is missing there? Right, there are only oblique mentions of Michigan's people. Summed up, it's all, "When we do these things I propose, things will trickle down to make your life better." Bernero's campaign platform is to cut right through all of that and say to people of all political persuasions and who are fed up with government that does not work on their behalf, "I plan to make my governorship all about you." The difference between his campaign and everyone else's can be summed up thusly ... rather than saying, "Michigan's families have suffered," his says, "You have suffered."
Put it to you like this: FDR was economically farther to the left than just about any president in American history — hell, can you imagine what Glenn Beck would do if Obama ordered the confiscation of all privately held gold as FDR did?
And yet, the American voters elected him to a record four terms as their president. Why? Because his shit was working for them. He took steps through the Works Progress Administration and other initiatives to significantly lower the nation’s horrendous employment situation. He set up Social Security to help ease older workers into retirement to make room for younger workers. The Wagner Act helped make organizing unions easier, which in turn helped people negotiate for better wages.
Right ... conservatives, as usual, have misread the anger of voters. They interpret it as a rejection of Obama's policies because of where they perceive them to lie on the political spectrum. In reality, voters aren't angry about a dot in the political spectrum, but because they think that when the chips are down government isn't doing much to help people.
Of the candidate's running so far, Bernero has the greatest potential to tap into that. He comes with credibility as a municipal leader who's had to balance difficult budgets while trying to maintain services, and as a leader who can point to a track record of building local partnerships for the betterment of both business and regular people, but also as someone who has honed a message with broader potential appeal than I think most people understand for the last year in sometimes hostile environments like Fox News.
Don't take this as a prediction or an endorsement, because Bernero still has serious hurdles to overcome, first and foremost whether he can raise enough cash to get his message out. If he does, and he manages to pair his twin messages of fighting on behalf of the middle class with experience as a fiscally conservative mayor into a message that gains traction, there is certainly good potential that he could win.
But at least two of the Republicans who Brennan said were briefed -- Missouri Sen. Christopher S. Bond and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Holland -- disputed Brennan's version of events, denying that they were told the suspect had received a Miranda warning.
(AP) — TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - The Pentagon says a soldier from northern Michigan has been killed in Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense said in a statement that 22-year-old Sgt. Dillon B. Foxx of Traverse City died Friday in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device.
Foxx is the 21st serviceman with known ties to Michigan who has died in the conflict in Afghanistan, and the second this year.
Following my earlier analysis of the 2009 Compliance Statements from the Michigan State House, the State Senate is also worth examining. It is important to remember how wide open the Senate is for turnover in 2010, as there are 30 of 38 State Senate seats open. In the past decade, only one state senate incumbent has lost to a challenger (Laura Toy to Glenn Anderson in 2006), underscoring how much easier open seats are to capture.
Figure 1 is a chart displaying the expected competitiveness for Michigan State Senate races. Using the underlying baseline vote from the Michigan Board of Education races over the past four elections (2002-2008), I have also noted the number of times each party has challenged a seat. For example, in Senate District 34, the Democrats have invested party resources in the seat one time, while the GOP has invested in it twice. It quickly becomes apparent that rarely spends money defending or challenging seats in their Safe or Strong category or that of the opposing party.
By now, probably most of you have heard the news that campaign season kicks off officially this evening during the Super Bowl. Rick Michigan has purchased some super expensive air time. I don't question the expenditure of money for a time when so many eyes will be riveted to one event; I do question the expenditure when so many of those eyes are going to be besotten or when they are likely to enrage viewers who don't want to think about politics.
The expenditure, it ought to be noted, wasn't just a buy of air time. Because Rick Michigan is obviously spending a lot of money on it, and because it's the first shot fired in this year's campaign, and because it's so high profile, it's not just a purchase of Tee Vee ad time, but also free advertising in newspapers and news services and blog around the state ... anywhere where Rick Michigan's Super Bowl ad is discussed, the Rick Michigan campaign succeeds in its effort to get his name out there. That includes right here, right now (note to the Rick Michigan campaign ... you can expect an invoice to arrive shortly).
Update! ... Just a quick point here, which is that you can twang on Rick Michigan for doing gimmick-y things like buying straw polls and Super Bowl ads, but they do appear to have a cynical strategy to this kind of stuff. They buy these things, and because a) it's regarded as a regular part of campaign coverage and b) news judgment died 20 years ago, cynically assume that what they're getting isn't the advertising or the poll but the actual campaign coverage itself. In short, they might be spending money on this thing or that, but what they're getting as a sweetener to the deal is free promotional materials in the news hole of the state's newspapers. Whether all or part of it is by design or by accident, the end result is the same.
I can kind of see Candace Miller's strategy at work here ... if federal authorities hadn't read the underwear bomber his Miranda rights, it would have opened a giant, gaping hole through which he could walk away from federal custody. That, in turn would be proof positive that the civilian court system isn't the place for terrorism suspects.
Washington -- Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, called Friday for Attorney General Eric Holder to testify before Congress about his decision to read the Christmas Day bombing suspect his Miranda rights to remain silent when arrested. Miller, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, has sharply criticized the Obama administration for not treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant. ...
Meanwhile, it turns out, Peter Hoekstra -- the second of Michigan's Pillars of Hercules in Republican homeland security circles -- was briefed about the underwear bomber having his rights read to him the day he was charged as a civilian criminal suspect. If Hoekstra thought it meant that the terrorists had won the war, it's something he apparently kept to himself ... or at least away from Candace Miller.
Hoekstra himself is miffed that the Obama administration said that the underwear bomber was again talking -- despite having not had one fingernail pulled out -- on the grounds that al-Qaida bases crucial security decision making based on what they read from the Associated Press.
“I do find it an interesting strategy that we hastily call a briefing to let America and our friends and our enemies in the Middle East know that he’s now singing like a canary,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Yes, it is interesting, isn't it?
Anyway, so what we've learned from the last week is that a person accused of committing a crime on American soil is, in the course of his incarceration under civilian federal authorities, giving important information without the need to waterboard him, or kick him in the stomach, or rip his fingernails out, or stick a burlap sack with an enraged rat over his head, or anything. We also know that it turns out that the one case in which we were told that torture not only worked but also spared Western Civilization from the despotic thumb of Islamofacist commie Mooslems (except the one in the White House) turned out to be something of a fairy tale. But, what has Candace Miller worked up is that the criminal suspect was read his rights, and what has Peter Hoekstra worked up is the belief that al-Qaida didn't think until a month and a half after to consider whether any of their other operations might be compromised by the fact that the underwear bomber was in custody.
The Holland Sentinel joins a small, weak, annoying chorus of papers around the state bent out of shape that the governor last week said we need to make reforms. What's the beef? Well, there is this headline:
Granholm reform ideas far too late
Interesting ... if you carry this through to its logical conclusion, it must mean that we're all screwed. After all, you don't declare "Too little, too late" unless you've gone past some point of no return. Meanwhile:
But Granholm (and, to be fair, most every other state elected official) failed to confront the deficit, advancing only piecemeal solutions while Michigan lurched from crisis to embarrassing crisis. The ship of state was sinking, and it seemed Granholm was merely rearranging the deck chairs.
Does anyone remember that service tax disaster from 2007? I mean, we're headed generally towards a broad service tax this year, potentially coupled with a reduction in the sales tax. Right, the genesis of that service tax just three years ago was the governor's recommendation in her budget from that year that the state ... address the structural problems in the budget by adopting a broad service tax to reflect how the economy has changed. As part of that budget proposal, she suggested a series of carrots and sticks ... to get local governments cooperating and sharing services, and also to get school districts to do the same (even at the RESD level).
In short, many of the ideas percolating around Lansing today, and that have gained traction today, are ideas first publicly proposed by the governor three years ago. Granted, they were not necessarily her ideas, but she proposed them.
What did she get for her pains? Laughed at. Most of the state's media took more seriously Republican talking points that the fat had not yet been cut entirely from the state budget bone, and insisted that her calls to balance out where the state got its revenue were not necessary, would destroy the state's economy, and that we should be more serious about cutting the state budget. It took an entire spring-and-summer's worth of stories from around the state about how dire things really were before we stopped seeing that "there remains fat on the bone" idiocy. This, of course, led us right into the budget shutdown and eventual service/MBT surcharge disaster. By then, all of the reforms -- in both spending and revenue -- that the governor had proposed were all dead and buried.
What we're seeing today is the political and media establishment finally take seriously some of what the governor proposed in 2007 ... and they're mad at her because they are three years late in doing so.
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His platform includes calling for a part-time lawmakers, smaller state government, a right to work law and health care reform.
“Let’s stop trying to figure out how to pay for the problem and begin fixing the problem itself,” he said. “Inject common sense back into our health industry, not more government.”
The sign its time to run for the hills is when one of these people pops up and insists that it's time to inject common sense into something.
Meanwhile, a fourth Republican has jumped into the fray to fight over the chance to take on Mark Schauer. It appears that he plans to campaign a very principled race right up to the point of his utter crushing. If this is the Greg Merle I'm thinking of, I believe we're seeing the Sharon Renier of the 7th District Republicans start to spread his wings.
Update! ...Jocelyn Benson, candidate for secretary of state, has reportedly picked up the endorsements of the Democratic parties in Alger, Clare, Eaton and Isabella counties. Benson faces Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey for the Democratic nod.
I remember one of the most heated arguments I ever got into in college. It was the editorial board of the CMU student newspaper's position on homosexuals serving openly in the military. I took the unpopular position that homosexuals should be allowed to serve, and then a year or so later a funny thing happened ... I actually entered military service.
Yes, I know, here things were put to a real test. And, here are the results:
It just didn't matter.
That is, it turns out that there were a hell of a lot more important things that demanded my attention. I showered in a berthing compartment of 200 people, but during the time between waking and going on watch or to general quarters, it never crossed my mind whether someone was watching me shower with lacivious intent. It just didn't matter. And, it frankly didn't appear to matter to anyone else. There were guys who everyone knew to be homosexuals, but nobody really cared beyond making snide remarks in the same way people make snide remarks about everyone who isn't exactly like them. Why is this? When you're waking up from a couple hours sleep you snatched in between standing watches and doing maintenance and cleaning and painting and eating and exercising and maybe even catching a movie or two, you just had more pressing things on your mind than what someone else was doing. Contrary to what I'd been told, the mere thought that someone in the berthing area might be gay didn't damage morale, because no one had the time or energy to think about it.
I bring this up because of Frank Rich's column about this last week's semi-stunning acknowledgment on the part of the Joint Chiefs that it is time to junk Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It is not surprising to me, because good military officers are first and foremost concerned with excellent exection of mission and second concerned with irrelevant bullshit. This paragraph, I thought, was incredible:
The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.
Right ... end this. And, while we're at it, perhaps it's time for Michigan to rethink its constitutional amendment defining marriage ... passed to provide one ideology and one political party a short-term advantage at the ballot box. How much damage is it doing our military to reject the service of Americans who wish to defend it; how much damage is it doing the state of Michigan to hang a sign on its front door reading, "Queers ain't welcome here."
Capital News Service does an article about term limits, and quotes Leon Drolet's opposition to changing term limits ... without mentioning that Drolet is emblematic of everything term limits was supposed to change.
“It’s painful for a lot of lawmakers when they’re taken out of that environment and they realize they have to pick up their own dinner check,” Drolet said. “They realize all those lobbyists in Lansing weren’t really their friends and they have to fend for themselves in Michigan’s economic climate, just like anyone else.”
It does have the ring of the personal to it, doesn't it? Leon Drolet stepped -- term limited -- out of the House and found the private sector a very chilly place indeed. And then, realizing (by his own admission) that he had no useful skills for said private sector, went running back to the public sector, where he's spent time as a county commissioner and running a political advocacy group touting the magical healing powers of the private sector.
Lansing mayor Virg Bernero has been saying since John Cherry dropped out of the race that he'd soon make a formal announcement about his own candidacy, with the implied conclusion that he'd get into the race. Everyone reporting on this, however (except Todd Heywood at Michigan Messenger) has been hedging their bets, pretending that he's exploring a run. A formal announcement to come Monday.
Asked Friday when he'll decide if he's going to run, Bernero said the announcement will come Monday, and political watchers expect him to jump into the race. He formed an exploratory committee last month after Lt. Gov. John Cherry dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination, and has made public statements indicating he's leaning toward running.
Dear media ... in Michigan, there is really no such thing as an exploratory committee. It's a phantom created by campaigns. Virg Bernero has been running for governor since December, and Monday he is expected to either announce that he thinks he's got a plausible chance of winning or that his campaign sputtered before getting off the flight deck. Please, in the future, report on the reality of things and not the spin offered by candidates.
Same with Andy Dillon.
Organized labor is considered a soft spot for Dillon, who supports merging health care for all public employees into one health care plan, an idea opposed by unions representing teachers and state workers. Asked by Detroit News Opinion Editor Nolan Finley on "Am I Right" how he thinks he can win the Democratic primary without union backing, Dillon said that's not a problem.
Dillon's been telling his supporters since December that he was going to get into the race, and that he had the support of people in the business community ... specifically Roger Penske and Tony Earley. (No wonder he said he's raised $1 million in 30 days.)
Still, I admire the hell out of his confidence. He doesn't think he needs the support of unions to win the nomination, he's got a track record in the Legislature that in better times would get him tarred and feathered, and he's enraged every major Democratic constituency over the last four years. Plus, people who see him speak say he comes across with all the personal magnitism of a limp noodle. This is all on top of his postively Bret Favre-like "will he or won't he" approach to running for governor ... which has been going on since last summer. But, apparently he just kind of waves all of these considerable drawbacks away as if they are annoying insects. In fact, it's the same kind of cool confidence he showed last summer when he said he could get the budget balanced and public employee health benefits reformed by the end of September.
“Reform” seems to have become the magic word in Lansing. If you want support for a proposal, call it a reform. If you are putting out an agenda, call it a list of reforms. Why? Because polls and focus groups have shown that the word “reform” resonates well with the public.
I thought I knew what a reform was, but because it seems to be used in so many different ways these days, I thought I’d better check. According to Dictionary.com, a reform is “the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory.” So I guess a reform really depends on your perspective—whether something is wrong, corrupt or unsatisfactory in the first place.
If you look at how the word is constructed, "reform" literally means to form something all over again. To shape it anew. You reform it, you change its construction to perform the same basic function as before but in a different way. Please note that this does not include cutting someone's pay and benefits. That isn't reforming anything. It's just a way to pretend that you've changed something by giving less money to the people expected to make the end results you desire come to fruition. You haven't reform a fire department by cutting the pay of the firefighter by 5 percent. You're just giving the firefighter 5 percent less money to go fight the same fires he was fighting yesterday when his salary was 5 percent higher. You haven't reformed Michigan State University by giving Tom Izzo 5 percent less ... oh wait, is his pay included in Mike Bishop's proposal?
This really isn't much more than a poorly thought out way to force local school districts to privatize non-instructional services.
GRAND RAPIDS -- Some area school districts could be docked state aid until they spend less on administration and more in the classroom, according to a reform bill pushed by an area state senator.
But districts singled out for spending -- including Grand Rapids Public Schools, which would lose $6 million -- say the bill by state Sen. Patricia Birkholz unfairly targets districts with expenses out of their control, including transportation.
Can we agree that no two school districts are going to be the same, and that what one district has to spend on one thing may not be the same thing as what even a district next door has to spend? Finally, the senator does have a very reasonable proposition that some school districts need to do a better job of spending what money they're given by the state. However, let me offer some effortless rebuttal to that:
Oh yeah, what has the senator cut in her own office?
See what I'm getting at here? At some point, the Legislature is going to have to turn its eyes inward if it wants to convince anyone else that it has any credibility in lecturing others in how to better spend money. That means the size in staffing, that means salaries, and that means the obnoxious health benefits for legislators. It also means amending the Freedom of Information Act to permit taxpayer transparency in this stuff. Otherwise, the Legislature just comes across as if it means this for everyone but them. And that, my friends, is how a very unpopular Legislature starts every budget battle by losing the public relations fight.
By the way, if everyone has to share equally in the budget pain, where are the proposals capping fund balances for charter schools, with money above and beyond that cap to be returned to the state?
