A coalition of environmental groups and others advocating for curbside recycling in Detroit and an end to the incinerator that burns the city’s trash to produce steam and electricity will hold a town hall meeting on Saturday, Nov. 21, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Elizabeth Church, 3138 Canfield (at McDougall) in Detroit.
The meeting, which will include both experts and area residents, will focus on the economic and health aspects of the incinerator. Childcare will be provided. For more information call Margaret Weber of the Coalition for a New Business Model for Detroit Solid Waste at 313-938-1133 or email mmgweber@gmail.com.
If you are like me, you probably don’t know what a “bill of attainder”
is. At least I didn’t know until I began looking at the lawsuit the
Center for Constitutional Rights just filed against the U.S. Government
on behalf of the group Acorn.
Turns out a bill of attainder refers to a legislative act that singles
out an individual or group for punishment without a trial — an act
prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Brooklyn, New York federal court,
alleges that when Congress cut off all funding to Acorn (an acronym for
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) beginning Oct. 1
without first conducting an investigation or holding a hearing, the
group was unfairly targeted for the type of punitive action the
Constitution is supposed to protect against.
The Congressional Research Service, in an independent analysis,
previously warned Congress that the so-called Defund Acorn Act appeared
to indeed be a bill of attainder because it specifically targeted the
organization.
The lawsuit also alleges that, because Congress didn’t just cutoff
funding to Acorn but included other organizations affiliated or allied
with the nonprofit organization, Acorn’s First Amendment rights of free
speech and association have been violated. It’s also alleged that the
group’s Fifth Amendment guarantee to due process has been violated.
It appears that concern over the bill’s language regarding “affiliated”
and “allied” groups has been particularly damaging to Acorn’s finances.
For example, banks such as Chase, Citibank and Bank of America cut off
funding for mortgage and finance assistance to families which were
facing foreclosure and being helped by the New York Acorn Housing Co.
Inc., according to an affidavit filed in connection with the suit.
“Based on the timing and the context, it is pretty hard to deny these
actions were motivated by a political intent to punish this
organization,” says Detroit attorney Julie Hurwitz.
Hurwitz, along with fellow Detroit attorney Bill Goodman, helped draft the Acorn lawsuit.
Although there is some precedent for the suit, says Hurwitz, it is
apparently the first time the bill of attainder issue has been used as
the basis for a nonprofit group to sue the federal government for
cutting off its funding.
What the lawsuit describes as the cutoff’s “malicious and punitive
intent” is the result of a “heavily funded and orchestrated political
campaign” against Acorn.
Among other things, the antipoverty group has been heavily involved in
voter registration, helping more than 2 million people register to vote
since 2003, according to the lawsuit.
Because it works primarily with low-income and minority populations —
groups that traditionally tend to support Democratic candidates — Acorn
has become a target of conservative political forces “dedicated to the
proposition that the few poor people who vote the better,” according to
the lawsuit.
If that deep-seated right-wing hostility toward Acorn were seen as an
iceberg, the tip is a number of Acorn counselors who were secretly
videotaped advising actors posing as a pimp and prostitute about how to
launder their illegal earnings. Two counselors caught in the sting were
fired, but that did nothing to appease the forces that want to crush
what U.S. Rep Darrell Issa (R-California) has called a “corrupt and
criminal organization.”
In the past, the right has also made much do about instances of fraud involving voter registration.
In September, Republican Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, in urging
passage of the defunding bill, told his colleagues, “Somebody has to go
after Acorn. Well, I suggest today, on the floor of the Senate, that
‘somebody’ is each and every U.S. senator.”
According to the lawsuit, this is what Acorn has done: “It has
advocated raising the minimum wage to a living wage in dozens of
communities across the country. It works against predatory lending and
to stop foreclosures. It has helped over 150,000 people file their tax
returns. It has worked on thousands of issues that arise from the
predicaments and problems of the poor, the homeless, the underpaid, the
hungry and the sick, on the local, state and national level through
direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter
participation.”
Think of the events that led to Kwame Kilpatrick’s undoing as an onion whose layers are still being peeled away.
Last month, during proceedings before the Attorney Disciplinary Board, attorney Mike Stefani, who represented former cops Gary Brown, Harold Nelthrope and Walt Harris in their whistleblower lawsuit, disclosed that he provided the Detroit Free Press’ Jim Schaefer with copies of the now-infamous test messages between Kilpatrick and his paramour and chief of staff, Christine Beatty, that proved the two lied under oath about having an affair and firing Brown.
Thursday, as Stefani resumed testimony before the board on charges of professional misconduct, light was shed on the elaborate tango that can exist between reporters and their sources.
Stefani, a former FBI agent, explained that he gave Schaefer a computer disc containing copies of the incriminating text messages with the understanding that, in regard to Brown and the other cops, the paper could only publish them if good faith efforts to obtain the messages from another source ultimately failed.
And so, when asked if he knew the source of text messages the Freep eventually published in an explosive story printed in January 2008, Stefani maintained he couldn’t say with certainty who the source was. It’s possible the Freep followed suggested leads Stefani provided to the reporter so that the text messages might be obtained from another source; Stefani testified that he never asked if that happened, and Schaefer never volunteered the information, the lawyer testified.
I think the applicable term here is plausible deniability. Or maybe covering your ass.
The same can be said regarding terms of a confidentiality agreement mandating that the city drop plans to appeal the jury’s verdict in the 2007 whistleblower trial where Kilpatrick and Beatty were found to have indeed done the cops wrong; in return Stefani would agree to hand over the original and all copies of the text messages — which were obtained after the trial had ended.
To comply with that stipulation, which lawyers representing Kilpatrick thought would keep the messages secret, Stefani asked Schafer to return the disc he’d been given, and the reporter complied. Asked if he knew whether the paper had made a copy of its own, Stefani said again that he didn’t ask, and Schaefer didn’t tell.
So, Stefani could, he testified, truthfully claim that all known copies of the text messages had been turned over, as required by the agreement.
The lesson there, if you haven’t learned it by now, is that a truthful answer can also be a mask for deceit.
What makes this case all the more complicated is another truth linked to that deceit: What Stefani did ultimately helped bring down a corrupt administration.
Here's something the Pew Center on the States does not say in its new report on troubled state economies:
Michigan, once a world technological leader, will settle slowly into the ooze. We will become Mississippi with ice storms, or maybe Haiti without sugar cane.
That was from a 2007 Politics and Prejudices column in Metro Times, one of a number columnist Jack Lessenberry has penned warning of the long-term consequences of Michigan's failure to confront its budget crisis. Recent weeks' columns have focused on the current mess in Lansing and the failure of Gov. Jennifer Granholm to lead in either the short or the longterm.
But the Pew Center study, Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril, is no less devastating in its analysis. In fact, it emphasizes, not only how far Michigan can fall, but how far it has fallen already. Of all the states of the union, only Michigan was still struggling to emerge from the recession of 2001 when the latest one arrived.
A passage from the report:
Michigan is still the eighth-most populous state — but it has yet to come to terms with no longer being one of the most prosperous, said Donald Grimes, a senior research specialist at the University of Michigan and an expert on the Michigan economy. Michigan ranked 37th for per-capita income, with peers that include Georgia (38th) and Montana (39th).
"The state of Michigan will have to learn all the things that being a poor state means," Grimes said. When the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis releases finalized 2009 data, Grimes said, he expects Michigan to be among the 10 poorest states.
Two more daunting passage:
Economic forecasters for Moody's Economy.com said they do not expect Michigan to see another peak in its business cycle during their entire 30-year forecasting horizon.
And:
Even if the state were to immediately begin growing at the rapid rate of the 1990s, it would be 2025 or 2030 before it replaced all the jobs it lost this decade.
Read the rest at www.pewcenteronthestates.org. Then scream.
That Michigan is lumped with likewise fiscally challenged states is little solace. In addition to California, the others are: a cluster of California's neighbors (Arizona, Nevada and Oregon), one more Sun Belt state (Florida), two of Michigan's neighbors (Illinois and Wisconsin) and a Northeastern cluster (New Jersey and Rhode Island).
The score card — which included such factors as state revenue declines, budget gaps, unemployment and foreclosures — put a number of states close behind the 10 worst cases. Those included Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, New York and Hawaii.
And, underscoring the nationwide troubles, the report said that only Montana and North Dakota avoided budget shortfalls in fiscal 2010.
Concurrent with an election that produced the biggest rearrangement of Detroit City Council in memory, city voters also put a stake in the long-maligned at-large council system that held for most of the last century.
This council sea change included the retirement of two council members (Barbara-Rose Collins and Sheila Cockrel), the withdrawal under indictment and plea deal of a third (Monica Conyers), the perhaps unprecedented rejection of an incumbent in the primary of a fourth (Martha Reeves) and the rare rejection of an incumbent in the general election (Alberta Tinsley-Talabi).
That’s not to mention to ascension to the top-vote-getting council presidency by political novice Charles Pugh and the reversal of fortune for former Council President and interim Mayor Ken Cockrel. Cockrel finished mid-pack (fourth place), just ahead of fellow incumbent Brenda Jones; incumbents Kwame Kenyatta and JoAnne Watson finished in eighth and ninth place respectively.
Newcomers Gary Brown and Saunteel Jenkins placed second and third between Pugh and Cockrel. Newcomers Andre Spivey and James Tate landed in the No. 7 and 8 slots between Jones and Kenyatta.
But one thing is certain is that this new council lineup will operate in a different political environment than its predecessors, since voters also approved 72-28 percent the proposal to replace the all at-large council system with one that has seven district seats and two at-large seats. Which is to say that the system that brought these nine winners on Tuesday is no more — and Tuesday’s winning strategies will have to be adjusted.
Will the top vote getters (and aspirants) posture differently than otherwise — with eyes on the at-large seats of 2013? And while we haven’t plotted out the addresses of the new council members, and while the new district boundaries are yet to be drawn, if the past is any guide, most of these candidates come from the city’s middle class islands, and more than a few of them are neighbors. Chances are that some of the council members eyeing district seats will be looking across the meeting table at likely opponents, and they’ll know that their potential audience is a specific community as well as the city at large.
Another change in the game: Unlike in the past, council candidates will have new incentives for challenging one another, which has largely been absent from the popularity contests that have passed for campaigns in the past. That could mean more negativity, rancor and factionalism in city politics — particularly as we near the next elections. But it could also bring the kind of feet-to-the-fire debates and discussions that the city needs more than ever.
What are the lessons of Tuesday's city election?
Well, for one thing, we’ve seen how much influence endorsements by the city’s daily papers don’t have. Both papers, after endorsing Pugh, withdrew those endorsements after his home went into foreclosure. It wasn’t just the problem with personal finances — there was also concern about Pugh’s candor during the interview process. Despite all that negative ink, Pugh still went on to capture the top council spot. So much for the power of editorial boards.
In some ways, Pugh’s election to the council presidency reflects both well and poorly on the city’s voters. On the one hand, a guy who had little more going for him than high name recognition because of his years on local TV gathered more votes than a solid, conscientious veteran like Cockrel, whose experience both as interim mayor and council president by all rights should have earned him the top spot.
On the other hand, in Pugh, Detroit has taken a big step forward by electing its first openly gay public official. That is a landmark the city should rightfully be proud of.
Overall, the new council promises to be infinitely more professional than the collection of clowns — Conyers, Reeves and Collins — that caused the body to become a national laughing stock.
As far as the mayor’s race: So much for Tom Barrow’s internal poll he claimed showed him crushing Bing. In a profession where credibility is a key currency, we’d say Barrow is going to be operating with a deficit if he ever again seeks public office. (We heard him on the radio ruling out another mayoral bid, but another office?)
On the other hand, the fact that Barrow was able to cut significantly into Bing’s massive lead coming out of the August primary, when he captured nearly 75 percent of the vote among a field of six, says something about the clout Detroit municipal labor unions still have. Barrow, despite the baggage of a prison stint for income tax evasion and fraud, with broad union support, was able to capture 41 percent of the vote.
And, finally, despite all the recent unearthing of past financial mismanagement of Detroit Public Schools money, voters still voted for a $500 million school bond measure. At a time when unemployment in the city is approaching 30 percent, in a town awash in hard times, its residents are still willing to pony up big money to help provide the best for the city’s children. In a city that has become the poster child for post-industrial decay and ruin, Detroiters have just shown that they haven’t given up hope for the future.
All in all, there is much to feel good about on this morning after.
Attorneys for Dwayne Provience will ask a Wayne County judge to release him from prison at a hearing on Tuesday after Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy on Friday dropped opposition to having his conviction overturned.
Provience, convicted in 2001 of murdering Rene Hunter,
is serving a 32- to 62-year sentence. In a separate but related murder
trial with a different victim and defendant two years later, Wayne
County prosecutors argued someone else killed Hunter. (See “Tale of two homicides,” in this week’s Metro Times.)
Provience,
represented by the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law
School, filed a motion this year asking that his conviction be set
aside and he be released.
Worthy’s office had fought his request until this week. In an e-mailed statement, Worthy told Metro Times that her office made the decision after reviewing evidence that Provience “should have been privy to at the time of his trial.
“We
agree with the defense that this evidence does entitle the defendant to
a new trial. For that reason, we will not issue any further statement
regarding specific facts of the case,” Worthy said in a statement.
Bridget McCormack, co-director of the Innocence Clinic, says she doubts that there will be a new trial.
"There
won't be a new trial because Dwayne Provience didn't do it and we have
shown that," she says. "But I am grateful that Kym Worthy has done the
right thing."
The renewal of
"Having a park in downtown
Located just east of the
The dedication ceremony drew an audience numbering in the hundreds who heard remarks from Gov. Jennifer Granholm and other speakers involved in the park's creation and funding.
But it was Milliken, governor from 1969 to 1983, who drew
the standing ovation with his thoughtful speech about environmental
preservation, politics and
Here are some excerpts:
It is a day to
recognize the vision of those who years ago could look past the abandon
industrial sites and cement silos and see the potential for a new riverfront
that could lead the way to a new
If one cares about the future of
For far too long the politics of division have played too
large a role in southeast
Milliken referenced the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech where he discussed "little black boys and girls" not being judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their characters:
He went on to say that I have a dream that one day little
black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys
and white girls as sisters and brothers. I hope that this park on this
magnificent riverfront can be a place in Michigan where little white, black,
Latino, Native American and Asian boys and girls do join hands. For people from
every race and background, a place where we can dream together about a new
Candidates for Detroit City Council are keeping busy racing from one forum to the next as Election Day approaches. But there’s only one event that we’re aware of that will focus on the many crucial environmental issues facing the city.
Thirteen local environmental, community and social justice organizations will hold an “open forum” from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at Sacred Heart Activities Building, 3451 Rivard St. (in the Eastern Market area). According to organizers, topics of discussion will include issues such as air quality, water conservation and accessibility, clean energy, economic development to create green jobs, land management, and food security.
Another issue certain to be a focus of discussion is the issue of incineration, which has been a key battle from many of the groups involved in the event. Sponsors include Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, Ecology Center, Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit, Hush House, People’s Water Board Coalition, Riverbend Community Association, Rosedale Recycles, Michigan Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision and others.
At least five candidates have agreed to participate.
“The goal of the forum is to give voters the opportunity to hear candidates’ plans to meet environmental challenges,” says Sandra Turner-Handy, a spokesperson for the Forum and the Coalition for a New Business Model for Detroit Solid Waste, which advocates a recycling, waste materials recovery system for Detroit.
For more information contact Margaret Weber at mmgweber@gmail.com or 313-938-1133.
In a 2007 inspection report the Ambassador Bridge owners fought to keep secret, the span is described as being “in overall fair condition” but in need of structural, electrical, steel and surface repairs.
“I make no allegations about the safety or lack of safety of the bridge,” says U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-Dearborn), who today released the 700-page report to media and promised to post its executive summary on his website within a few days. “One of the reasons I’m releasing this is so that smarter people than John Dingell can look at it and arrive at better and informed judgments.”
In February, the congressman filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the report from the federal government. The bridge’s owner, the Detroit International Bridge Co., fought the report’s release until yesterday, when U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan denied the company’s motion to block the disclosure.
The company claimed release of the report would both provide proprietary information to its competitors and pose a security risk.
“The public interest in knowing the conditions of bridge exceeds any potential security risk in releasing bridge inspection information,” Dingell says.
Duggan agreed with Dingell, ruling that the public’s right to know the condition of the bridge outweighed the bridge company’s fears.
What exactly those security fears are hasn’t been addressed. In fact, the report itself recommends the bridge company “consider a security assessment study for the bridge to primarily identify any existing component vulnerabilities and to develop countermeasures as needed for the vulnerabilities in conjunction with existing security measures.”
That’s particularly interesting, because, since 2001, the bridge company has been using national security concerns to justify its actions, including sealing off part of the city-owned Riverside Park adjacent to the bridge. As of 2007, according to this inspection report, a security assessment had not been done.
Bridge company officials did not immediately return telephone calls to Metro Times.
The report itself contains both 2005 and 2007 inspection information collected by a Pennsylvania construction engineering firm at the behest of DIBC. The report was given to state and federal governmental departments. But the state of Michigan had agreed to a bridge company request to exempt the report from being publicly disclosed.
Dingell, however, got the report from the Federal Highway Administration, and says he also is seeking the 2008 and 2009 inspections, which he also intends to make publicly available.
One thing that remains to be determined is what experts who review the report will have to say about the bridge company’s claims that the new bridge it wants to build adjacent to the Ambassador is necessary because of the deteriorated condition of the existing span.
The report released today contains descriptions of some needed repairs: deficiencies in main cables, cracks in paint, lack of caulking, exposed reinforcing steel and unsound concrete, for example. Some of the repairs have been made or were scheduled to be, the report notes. Dingell points out none of the issues has caused federal officials to shut the bridge for safety precautions.
Another question will be whether the company is doing all it can to preserve the existing bridge, or if it is intentionally letting the bridge, first opened to traffic in 1929, fall into disrepair in an attempt to help justify building the new, larger bridge it wants.
A couple weeks back, we took Time magazine to task for its retelling of — Time’s headline — “The Tragedy of Detroit.” The region’s stark segregation is one of the elements of that, but, as we argued in a blog posting last week, the piece overplays the role of the 1967 riot and underplays other equally troubling factors.
In examining a key factor, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion puts the federal government on trial – even if it’s only a mock trial — on Friday, Oct. 16. Judge Victoria Roberts of the U.S. District Court in Detroit presides as attorneys argue the fictional — but hardly unrealistic — case of Miller v. Federal Housing Administration, in which attorneys for Miller, an African American, will argue that FHA policies kept him from buying a home in the suburbs in 1949 and 1960, first through FHA-endorsed racially restrictive covenants and then through red lining.
Following the trial, panels will examine how racial housing patterns, in turn, “impact health care, education, employment, business development, entrepreneurship, urban development and mass transit.” Other discussions during the daylong program include the history southeast Michigan housing and the current crisis in home foreclosures.
“Michigan’s history of discrimination continues to impede the state’s progress, and this is something we can only overcome through awareness,” Roundtable President and CEO Thomas Costello said in a press release. “We cannot move to a new beginning without recognizing history.”
The program at WSU costs $30, including continental breakfast, lunch and parking. More information at miroundtable.org or call 517-485-6600.
On the evening before the roundtable, an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit looks at the intertwined histories of race and housing in metropolitan Detroit.
Meanwhile, looking to the future of the city, the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan, hosts a panel next week on “The Role of Urban Food Retail in Detroit’s Economic Development and Revitalization.” Panelists include Randall Fogelman of the Eastern Market Corporation and Margaret Garry of the Michigan Department of Social Services.
That program is held at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Annenberg Auditorium, 1120 Weill Hall, 735 South State St., Ann Arbor.
That program is to be held Wednesday, Oct. 21, from 4-5:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public. More information at closup.umich.edu or by calling 734-647-4091.
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