We reported last month on West Michigan residents that have given large sums of money to candidates and political parties in an attempt to influence the 2012 elections.
A new report from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that President Obama is ahead of all Presidential candidates in terms of PAC money raised and Obama has raised more than double than any GOP candidate, with $157 million at the last campaign finances reporting date on February 1st.
In Michigan, there are candidates who have a commanding leading in terms of money raised so far. In the Senate race, the incumbent Debbie Stabenow has raised nearly $9 million, with the next closest candidate (Pete Hoekstra) raising just over $2 million.
Stabenow has raised the bulk of her funds from corporations such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield, DTE Energy, GM, Ford, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and the women’s PAC known as EMILY’s List. Hoekstra on the other hand is relying on money specific to West Michigan with major donors like Amway, Autocam, Meijer, Gentex and DP Fox Ventures.
In the 3rd Congressional race, incumbent Justin Amash has raised just shy of half a million dollars and no reporting as of yet from either of the two Democratic challengers, Trevor Thomas or Steve Pestka. You can see from this chart here who the main contributors are to Amash to date.
In the 2nd Congressional race, Rep. Bill Huizenga has raised $440,420 so far, with no reported Democratic challengers listed. The bulk of Huizenga’s money is coming from West Michigan as well and a large percentage of it coming from the DeVos family businesses, such as Amway/Alticor, Windquest Group, DP Fox Ventures and the Orlando Magic.
Michigan Legislation expected to include gay and transgender residents in Civil Rights Law
A coalition of LGBT groups from around the state, including the ACLU of Michigan, Affirmations, Equality Michigan, KICK, the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion, and the Ruth Ellis Center have been working on getting Michigan legislators to introduce legislation which would update the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act (1976).
According to this coalition of group, the new legislation “would ensure that no Michigander could be discriminated against, or fired from their job, just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Some of the organizing around this issue at the local level has paid off in that cities like Flint successfully “signed off on including transgender people in Flint’s human rights ordinance. A week later, the White House came to Detroit to address housing discrimination against gay and transgender folks with the Ruth Ellis Center. And this past week, allies in Muskegon worked with the City Commission to make progress on protecting gay and transgender people from discrimination.”
Considering there is all this movement at the local level and that some Michigan legislators want to overturn local ordinances, it seems like an important time for people to support statewide legislation that would prevent the continuation of existing legal forms of discrimination against those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.
The coalition of groups are asking people to get people to support such legislation and invite 5 friends to join the campaign. The campaign is being hosted at the online site Don’t Change Yourself, Change the Law, where you can join the campaign and get 5 friend to get involved.
Book Traffickers Smuggle Banned Books Into Tucson, Arizona
This video is re-posted from the Real News Network.
Students and activists set up “Underground Libraries” of books prohibited in suspended Mexican American Studies classrooms
On Friday, March 16th, a caravan of students, teachers, and activists calling themselves “librotraficantes,” or book traffickers, rolled into Tucson, Arizona bringing boxes of “smuggled” books that have been prohibited in the classrooms of the Tucson Unified School District following the controversial suspension of its Mexican American Studies program.
The caravan traveled more than 1,000 miles over the span of 5 days after departing from Houston, Texas, with additional caravans arriving from other locations like Los Angeles. On Saturday, lead librotraficante organizer Tony Diaz and others staged a literary teach-in at the John Valenzuela Youth Center in South Tucson, where they also established one of several new “Underground Libraries” where the banned books will be available to community members.
Assassinations at Home and Abroad
This article by Jemima Pierre is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
Trayvon Martin was a slim, seventeen-year-old Black boy callously murdered on February 26, 2012 by George Zimmerman, an unhinged, racist vigilante. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, claimed that he shot the young Martin in self-defense. The recently released 9-1-1 calls show that Zimmerman, without any evidence but Martin’s Blackness, assumed that Martin was drugged, up to no good, and on his way to commit a crime in the gated community in a suburb of Orlando, Florida. By all indications, Zimmerman got out of his car, ran after Martin, accosted him, cornered him, and shot him.
The reaction to Trayvon Martin’s killing has been swift. Most people are outraged, and rightly so. For us in the Black community, Trayvon Martin’s death is both the latest incident in a long history of racial profiling and racist murders and another manifestation of a steadily-increasing anti-Black racism. The calls for a federal investigation are growing—including those from the muted and lethargic Congressional Black Caucus. And while Obama has refused to comment on the case, calling it a matter for the local police, the Civil Right’s Division of Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has decided to open an investigation. For most of us, this is a good start.
As of today, Zimmerman has not been arrested or even charged for the murder. The reason? The Sanford police department accepted Zimmerman’s claim that he was acting in self-defense. In a recent article on MotherJones.com, Adam Weinstein has argued that the Florida self-defense and “stand your ground” laws will be key to this case—and may very well keep Zimmerman out of jail. Zimmerman, he says, “may have benefited from some of the broadest firearms and self-defense regulations in the nation.” These regulations make it extremely easy for Florida citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons while those who already hold permits are exempted from mandatory waiting periods when purchasing new guns. Furthermore, the “stand your ground” law allows residents to use deadly force against a perceived threat without having to back down. “Stand your ground” is the most pernicious part of the law, as it allows anyone to use deadly force if they perceive a threat of death or “great bodily harm,” with the assurance that those claiming self-defense will be given civil and criminal immunity.
But if we are angry that Zimmerman’s non-prosecution is an effect of the Florida “stand your ground” laws allowing – indeed, encouraging – “justifiable homicides” on the basis of perceived threat, we should also be angry about another claim for justifiable homicides that also hides under legal cover: the US government’s targeted assassination program. In a speech to Northwestern University law student in early March, Eric Holder argued that the Obama administration has the authority to secretly target and kill U.S. citizens and non-citizens perceived to be threats without the target knowing s/he is a target, without the target being charged, without the target being given an opportunity to respond to the charges, and without any judicial oversight. “The President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one,” Glenn Greenwald has written on this policy, “acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he’s accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations.” How is this policy of targeted assassination different from the Florida “stand your ground” law? At least Zimmerman confronted Martin before killing him.
For those of you who will chastise me as being insensitive to Martin’s horrible death — or who will insist that the two cases are distinct, let me remind you of the story of Adbulrahmana al-Awlaki. Adbulrahmana al-Awlaki was the sixteen year old American-born US citizen killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in early October 2011. The young al-Awlaki was walking with his seventeen year old cousin and seven other people when he was killed in a “trio of drone attacks,” according to a CNN report. At first, the Western press reported al-Awlaki’s age as 21, ignored the fact of his citizenship, and implied that he was a legitimate “terrorist” target. When the truth of the young boy’s citizenship and age emerged, a US official said, without apology, that he “was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” TIME magazine later asked if the young al-Awlaki was “paying for the sins of this father.” His father, Anwar al-Awlaki had been killed weeks earlier by another US drone attack. While he was well known to Western audiences through US Homeland Security propaganda as a radical cleric and dangerous terrorist, Anwar al-Awlaki’s assassination was carried out without public evidence or due process. But these assassinations were justified by Eric Holder – whose office is now tasked to investigate Trayvon Martin’s murder.
We should be outraged at all of these deaths. Trayvon Martin, Adbulrahmana al-Awlaki, his cousin, and the countless civilians – so-called terrorist targets — who are victims of a US policy of drone strikes and who have no recourse to the law, and no appeal to human decency.
Our righteous indignation and anger over the Trayvon Martin murder has to stretch beyond our community to consider a global humanity – and especially the nonwhite victims of US militarism and racism. We must pause and reflect on the injustice of the US government’s extrajudicial assassinations, and the fact that the Obama administration has claimed the right to kill people in multiple countries around the world whenever it wants. And we also should ask ourselves the question recently posed on twitter by @public_archive: “Trayvon was executed because of a perceived threat; US launches target assassinations because of perceived threats. Both are somehow legal?” Unfortunately, they are. And they are related: the Florida laws are the local articulation of a US foreign policy that deploys murder and mayhem at any sign of a threat—even as our officials generate these threats behind closed doors and without any pretentions of legality. And both Trayvon and Abdulrahmana, Black boy and brown, were victims of a culture of vigilantism masking itself through false appeals to white security.
Dump Rush Protest will coincide with anti-reproductive rights rally on Friday in Grand Rapids
The Dump Rush on WOOD Radio campaign continues with a third protest planned for this Friday, March 23 at 1:00 pm outside the Clear Channel office in downtown Grand Rapids.
This protest will happen at the same time that those opposed to contraceptives and reproductive rights will be holding a rally on Calder Plaza. Those organizing this event are framing at a religious freedom gathering, but the MLive story makes it clear that those organizing this rally are reacting to the nationwide protest against Rush Limbaugh for his misogynist comments and contempt for reproductive rights for women in this country.
People are invited to bring signs, handouts and letters to deliver to WOOD Radio demanding that they remove Limbaugh’s program from their regular lineup of syndicated shows.
For those who cannot attend we are asking them to do the following things, which are absolutely necessary for this campaign to be effective:
1. Send e‐mails to WOOD Radio Station Manager Tim Feagan at TimFeagan@clearchannel.com or write letters to: WOOD Radio 77 Monroe Center Grand Rapids, MI 49503.
2. Pressure local businesses that advertise on WOOD Radio to pull their funding until WOOD Radio removes the Limbaugh show. Here is a list of local companies and their contact information:
Grand Rapids Lighting
616-949-4931
Kyper College
kcapisciolto@kuyper.edu 616-988-3676
Kent Equipment
(616) 675-5368 http://www.kentequipment.com/contact.htm
River City Reproductions
616.464.1220 info@rivercityreproductions.com
Life EMS
1-888-543-3367 info@lifeems.com
Mercantile Bank of Michigan
616.406.3604 https://www.mercbank.com/contact.asp
Silver Bullet Firearms
(616) 249-1911 silverbulletfirearms@gmail.com
West Michigan Office Interiors
(800) 964.0201 sales@wmoi.com
Granite Transformations
(866) 400-1594
http://grandrapids-granitetransformations.aiprx.com/grandrapids/contact-us/
AMR-West Mi
(616) 459-8228
http://www.ems-education.com/page5/
AAA Turf
616-669-7715
sales@aaaturf.com
West Michigan Glass Block
616.243.3700
http://www.wmgb.com/contact.asp
Bartlett Tree Experts
616-245-9449
Spectrum Health
(616) 391-1382
http://www.spectrumhealth.org/body.cfm?id=57
Family Fare
616-878-8350
http://familyfare.spartanstores.com/contact-us
3. Share this campaign information with as many people and organizations you are affiliated with.
This article is based on a presentation I did last night at CMU with Dee Ann Sherwood.
In thinking about Native American representation in media it is important to think about both how Native identity has been constructed in the dominant US culture and what the cumulative effect that has on non-Native people.
The dominant or hegemonic view that many Euro-Americans have of Native people is “the Noble Savage,” an image that has Native people frozen in time from the 19th century. This imagine is not only from the past, but it is often a distorted image, because much of the Native representation by the dominant culture is not accurate. People often think that all Native people wore buckskin and had feathers on their head, but this is purely the result of the dominant culture’s construction of what we want Native people to look like.
This constructed notion of Native Americans has been taking place for more than 2 centuries in the US, a construction that began with newspapers and continues through today in video games.
In fact, most of the video game industry’s depiction of Native people fits into the noble savage identity, where Indians are generally depicted in 19th century settings. While there are a variety of characters, the most dominant is that of the violent Indian, those that hold the pose of someone who seems dangerous.
The first video game to have a Native American as the main character was Turok. Turok looked like the iconic Native American, but he fought and killed dinosaurs. Again, this is an image of Native people frozen in time, even if it is thousands of years ago.
For Native women, the representation is equally troubling. Native women are often depicted in a hyper-sexual way, vulnerable and available to be taken. In fact, there are Native women who appear in video game porn, such as the game Custer’s Revenge, where Colonel Custer rapes Native women that he captures. This narrative is not only extremely sexist, but is continues a conquest narrative, where Native land and Native people are for the taking by the dominant culture.
I highly recommend as a resource this great video deconstruction of video games narrated by Irish, Anishinaabe, Metis writer Beth Aileen Lameman and edited by Beaver Lake Cree filmmaker Myron Lameman.
In the land of Television, the dominant representation of Native people has historically been juxtaposed with cowboys, again as savages that the dominant culture must protect themselves from. In recent years, while there have been more diversity in how Native people are depicted it is still extremely limited. This limited representation is clearly evident in children’s TV programming. In 2003, GRIID conducted a research project on local educational TV shows and found that not one of those programs had a Native character in them during the month of May.
The national organization Children Now has also conducted similar studies, where the conclusions was similar to the GRIID study. What was different about the 2003 – 2004 Children Now study is that they looked a Prime Time TV shows that youth watched. In this study, Native characters were almost non-existent.
Turning to Hollywood movies, we see a similar pattern. The book Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, edited by Peter Rollins, demonstrates that the bulk of Native representation in films has been as savages living in the 19th century. In more recent years, there have been some shifts and films that have been directed by Native people are radically different from the dominant culture’s depiction, with films such as Smoke Signals and Pow Wow Highway. For more on Native produced films check out the fabulous book Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video, by Beverly Singer.
In 2003, GRIID conducted a film study looking at the first 50 films released on DVD that were also major releases across the country. Only one film in that study had Native characters. In the film Snow Dogs, there is a Native female bartender who is presented as a male sexual fantasy and one Native male character that almost never talks and is seen as the stoic Indian.
Again, in 2010 GRIID conducted another film study, looking at 40 of the top films released in the first six months of that year. In this study, again we only found one depiction of a Native character in the animated movie Ponyo.
Shifting to an investigation of how the news media presents Native Americans, we find that there is not a huge shift from how entertainment media has depicted Native people.
Historically, if one looks at the print media and particularly newspapers it is clear that there has been a very narrow depiction. One important resource that looks at Native portrayal in US newspapers is News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, by Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres.
One example in News for All the People states, “Before the Revolutionary War the Colonial Press in the mid – 18th Century began to demonize Native people as Euro-Americans began to expand westward. In South Carolina, once the war with the Cherokees began, an astounding 30% of all stories in the South Carolina Gazette were about violence by Native Americans.” Just to be clear they are saying that 30% of all stories, not stories about Native Americans, but 30% of all stories.
The depiction of Natives as being violent and a danger to the expanding colonial communities of Euro-Americans makes complete sense if one is operating from the viewpoint of the dominant culture, which the majority of US-based newspapers did and still do. Newspaper editors in the US at that time clearly believed in the notion of Manifest Destiny, where the land and resources were there for the taking.
Another blatant example of this type of thinking amongst US newspaper editors is reflected in the following editorial comment:
“The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are.”
This statement was made in an editorial in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, by Frank L. Baum, the creator of the highly popular story, The Wizard of Oz. Several years later Baum made a similar comment in his editorial column, which said:
“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”
At this point I think it is important to be clear that Baum was not the except, but the norm in terms of how US newspapers depicted Native people and what attitudes they presented in their publications. An excellent investigation into how US newspapers reported on Native people is The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press 1820 – 1890, by John Coward.
The current depiction of Native people is significantly different, since the Native populations have been drastically reduced and many of them relocated to reservations. Because of population reduction and the dominant culture’s hegemonic view of Native people, news coverage of Native people is minimal or limited in the type of coverage.
For instance, in the studies that GRIID has done in the past on race representation on local TV news, there has been very limited coverage of Native people. When there is coverage it tends to be from a very narrow perspective and race specific. What we mean by that is that the typical stories we see are the annual Pow Wow stories, stories about Native Casinos and sometimes, Native protests.
These limited kinds of stories serves the purpose of freezing Native people in this narrow stereotype that fits the hegemonic view of the dominant culture. It also says indirectly that Native people do not have opinions on larger policy issues, the economy, environment, public health, education or a how array of other topics that are relevant to that community. This type of news coverage acts as a form of racial profiling by the news media, whether it is intentional or not.
There is a great deal more that could be said about Native representation in media, but the analysis presented here provides enough information to make it clear that Native people are under represented and misrepresented in the dominant news and entertainment media.
Media Justice
People who attended the presentation last night asked what can be done to challenge this hegemonic view?
First, I think it is important to both expose and attempt to hold the media accountable for how they represent and report on Native People. This means that we need to do some quantitative analysis and monitor media in whatever form we chose. This would provide people with additional evidence of the bias, but it also provides you with hard data to engage media makers.
A second tactic could be to provide some cultural/historical training for news agencies by Native communities. Native people could provide the necessary information and insights in to local Native communities that could lead to improved and increased coverage. 
However, the most important strategy I would recommend that I learned from Native scholar Beverly Singer while she spoke in Grand Rapids last year, was that Native people need to make more of their own media. “Instead of relying on the dominant culture to tell their stories Native people,” Dr. Singer said, “should tell their own stories.”
This of course is already happening with online sources like Indian Country Today, National Native News, Native American Times or Indian Country News. However, in the US most Native media is online, with limited ownership or programming in broadcast media.
According to a 2007 report from Free Press, while racial minorities make up 33% of the US population, they only own 7.7% of all broadcast media. Of that 7.7% less than .5% is Native owned broadcast stations. To push for greater media justice, what if Native communities went to local radio and TV stations and said they wanted a regular time slot to produce their own show. Radio companies in Grand Rapids, like Clear Channel, which owns 8 stations could surely provide a 1-hour a week slot to the Native community to produce their own show and tell their own stories.
TV station, now that the digital spectrum has increased their programming could also easily give up 1 hour a week (for starters) to the Native community to produce their own show. I mean, why does FOX 17 need to broadcast re-runs of The Flying Nun, when Native people have no voice on local TV?
This will not happen without a fight, but if this is what Native people want, those of us in the non-Native community owe it to them to fight with them and demand that Native people have the resources to portray themselves the way they want to be portray. It would at least be an important step against challenging the hegemonic and highly constructive depiction of Native people in commercial media all over the US.
Michigan gets an F on Campaign Finance Disclosure
This article by Chris Andrews is re-posted from iwatchnews.org.
The campaign finance system here has more holes than I-94 after a spring thaw. Big spenders and special interests can easily shovel millions of dollars into election activities — secretly if they choose. The lobby law is so weak that it was nearly impossible to determine which companies were spending millions to oppose construction of a new bridge. And the financial disclosure system for state elected officials?
Well actually, there isn’t one.
Welcome to Michigan, the “Trust Us” State when it comes to transparency. Reform efforts are frequently launched, sometimes debated, always shelved. Meanwhile, special interests continue to make greater use of loopholes that allow them to influence the system without leaving fingerprints on the money spent doing it.
“It appears we’re living with an honor system in an environment where there isn’t much honor,” said Rich Robinson, executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks campaign spending and lobbying records.
All those factors help explain why the state earns a grade of 58 — an “F” — from the State Integrity Investigation, a collaborative project of the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International. Overall, Michigan ranks 43rd among the 50 states.
The analysis of 330 indicators of state accountability measures shows that this state of almost 9.9 million residents has major flaws in tracking money spent to elect officials and shape policy. The set of laws regulating campaign spending, lobbyist activity, and financial disclosure guarantee essentially says to the public: Mind your own business.
Even so, Michigan’s state government is not known for scandal. It gets many things right.
It is not plagued by pay-to-play allegations in procurement, or by nepotism or cronyism in the civil service system. Its Freedom of Information Act usually, if not always, works to give journalists and others the information they request at a reasonable cost. The sort of corruption that is common in Detroit rarely finds its way 90 miles north to Lansing. And Gov. Rick Snyder’s new push for transparency is giving residents greater online access to information about how the state spends billions of dollars annually than ever before.
But there are glaring holes, especially when it comes to the millions of dollars spent to wine and dine lawmakers, elect or defeat candidates and pass or kill legislation. Efforts at reform are frequent; and they almost uniformly fail.
Following the money: Good luck with that
The Michigan Campaign Finance Act was enacted as a post-Watergate reform in 1976 to limit the impact a few rich individuals or well-heeled special-interest groups can have on elections, as well as to shine light on who is spending how much.
More than thirty-five years later, the law misses the mark in at least three ways. In the real world of politics, individuals and groups can spend as much as they want to elect or defeat a candidate, or ballot issue. A growing share of the money goes, legally, unreported. Enforcement efforts are modest at best.
Campaign finance law does limit how much individuals, political action committees, and political parties can contribute to candidates’ campaign committees. For instance, individuals can give no more than $3,400 to a candidate for governor; political action committees can give no more than $34,000 and political parties are limited to $68,000.
But for political high-rollers, these restrictions are nothing more than speed bumps. They can make unlimited contributions to political parties and political action committees, which turn around and make unlimited independent expenditures on television ads and other communications to support or defeat a candidate.
The only restriction is that the independent expenditures cannot be under the control of the candidate committee.
In practice, this has allowed wealthy individuals and powerful PACs to funnel huge amounts of money into campaigns.
In 2006, Republican businessman Dick DeVos contributed nearly $35 million to his own unsuccessful campaign for governor. That same year, Kalamazoo philanthropist Jon Stryker and his wife contributed more than $5 million to the new Coalition for Progress political action committee, which spent more than $3 million supporting Democrats or opposing Republicans. Democrats captured numerous swing seats to take control of the Michigan House of Representatives. Some Republicans think Stryker’s money was the difference.
Stealthy issue ads
At least those contributions were reported, and journalists and voters could track the money on the Secretary of State’s website. That can’t be said for issue-advocacy ads, which have emerged as the loophole of choice in the 21st century.
The ads look, sound and feel like standard candidate ads, but because they don’t directly ask voters to vote for or against a candidate, they don’t fall under the campaign finance act, according to the Secretary of State’s interpretation of the law.
Over the past several election cycles, the amount of money pumped into campaigns through issue-advocacy ads has grown enormously. Between 2000 and 2010, nearly $70 million in campaign advertisements for state office were not disclosed under the Michigan Campaign Finance Act. The figure comes from the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, which inspects the public files at television stations. There is no information available on money spent on radio ads, robo-calls or other issue-advocacy communication.
The Michigan Democratic Party spent $4.3 million on issue ads supporting Democratic candidate Virg Bernero in the 2010 gubernatorial election, and voters don’t know who gave the money to the party. Because these ads aren’t regulated by the campaign finance act, the donors aren’t disclosed. The Republican Governors Association pitched in $3.6 million for ads to elect Rick Snyder.
The Secretary of State’s Office is charged with enforcing the Campaign Finance Act but has relatively little power and little history of aggressive enforcement. The law directs elections officials to try to resolve disputes rather than prosecute. When Baxter Machine & Tool Inc. made an illegal contribution of $25,000 to a political action committee (state law prohibits corporate contributions to PACs) in 2004, the Secretary of State dismissed the complaint against the company “because this matter occurred in error,” and imposed a $1,000 fine, while allowing the political action committee to keep half the money.
Conciliation over punishment
The lack of subpoena power is a barrier to investigation of violations.
In 2010, the state was prepared to reach a $10,000 conciliation agreement with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who spent nearly $1 million of his campaign funds on legal services. The agreement fell through. In 2011, new Secretary of State Ruth Johnson took a tougher stand, citing Kilpatrick’s testimony in a civil suit that he paid his lawyers to defend himself against perjury charges related to an affair. Armed with information it could not get on its own, the secretary of state then filed suit seeking fines totaling $976,000.
In a state slowly pulling out of a decade-long recession, lobbying is a big and thriving business. In the first seven months of 2010, lobbyists spent nearly $20 million, up 12 percent from 2010, according to an analysis by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
Enacted in 1978, the Michigan Lobbyists Registration Act was designed to let the public know who is lobbying legislators and top administration officials, and how much they are spending to wine, dine and otherwise influence decision-makers. But the disclosure requirements are so weak that linking spending to political outcomes is virtually impossible.
“Frankly, lobbying reports themselves are almost meaningless,” said Robert LaBrant, general counsel for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and one of the state’s leading authorities on the lobbying law.
The law requires lobbyists to list their clients, but not a whole lot more. Michigan’s major lobbying firms represent many clients with a variety of interests. From the reports, you can’t tell whether lobbyist expenditures are intended to shape business taxes, teacher tenure laws, movie industry incentives or a new bridge to Canada, all of which came up during the 2011 legislative session.
The Michigan Campaign Finance Network reported that the Detroit International Bridge Company spent $4.7 million on advertising opposing a second bridge that would present competition to the one it owns. But MCFN Executive Director Rich Robinson said he couldn’t find any evidence that the DIBC had registered to lobby, or paid a firm to lobby on its behalf.
Gift loophole
And then there’s the gift loophole. Lobbyists are barred from giving gifts to legislators or other officials. But what is a gift? According to the lobby law, it is something that cost more than $57 in 2012. (The threshold is adjusted annually for inflation.) So if a lobbyist gives a senator a ticket to a Michigan State University basketball game, it isn’t a gift after all.
A few years ago, several lobbyists attempted to enhance their generosity by pooling their money to give theater tickets to legislators and spouses without exceeding the threshold. The Secretary of State said no, in response to a ruling request from LaBrant, of the Michigan Chamber, and Robinson, of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, two of the state’s leading experts on campaign finance and lobby regulation.
Similarly, lobbyists don’t have to identify the legislators they are taking out to breakfast, lunch or dinner as long as the cost is less than $57 in a month or $350 in a reporting period. “Generally, only if you are going out for a real night on the town with the wine and hors d’oeuvres and a nice dessert do you get over the financial threshold,” said LaBrant.
And Michigan is one of only three states without asset disclosure laws for top elected officials.
Unlike members of Congress, and lawmakers in 47 states, they aren’t required to let the public in on their personal wealth or financial holdings, which leaves voters unable to detect potential conflicts of interest. Governors and candidates for governor often voluntarily release their tax returns or summaries of them, but those disclosures are not required.
Various proposals have been made dating back to at least the 1980s to establish financial disclosure laws, similar to those required for candidates for Congress. But none have been enacted into law, so the public can only hope that legislators will disclose any conflicts and abstain when there are conflicts.
Conflicted about conflict
But there are no clear guidelines about what constitutes a conflict, and in reality, lawmakers almost never abstain for ethical reasons. Former Attorney General Mike Cox, who supported financial disclosure in 2009 when he was preparing to run for governor, researched House and Senate records between
2003 and 2009 and found there wasn’t a single instance when a state senator abstained from voting because of a conflict of interest. There were only 33 abstentions in 6,495 votes in the House.
In May 2011, Democrats in the state Senate formally challenged whether senators who had direct interests in limited liability corporations (and stood to benefit under a tax reform plan) should be required to abstain from voting. Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, who serves as president of the Senate, ruled that senators must decide for themselves whether there are conflicts of interest. Everyone voted.
Michigan state law establishes a state ethics board designed to investigate wrongdoing. The members of the seven-person panel are unpaid volunteers, many of whom are former politicians with allegiance to one party or the other. The board has no budget, and its only staff is a civil service official who serves as executive secretary, and an assistant attorney general who is assigned to the board.
Over the years, the board has had little impact. It cannot accept anonymous complaints, which creates a barrier for anyone to come forward who might fear reprisal. Its authority extends to the executive branch but not the judiciary or Legislature. Lynn Jondahl, a former state representative who chaired the ethics board during the administration of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said lawmakers occasionally approached him in search of guidance, but he had to tell them they were not within the board’s purview.
Even with its executive branch investigations, the ethics board has no power to take action other than to make recommendations to the agency where the alleged violation occurred. “It [the board] is very limited both in terms of its coverage of the executive branch and in terms of the sanctions, or lack of sanctions,” Jondahl said.
Legislator to lobbyist
Ethics reform advocates frequently call for legislation to establish “cooling off periods” before legislators and top administration officials become lobbyists or work in industries they oversaw, usually between six months and two years. But Michigan lawmakers have not been inclined to limit their future career options.
In fact, it is commonplace for legislators and other leading state officials to become lobbyists after their terms expire. Term limits restrict legislators to three two-year terms in the House and two four-year terms in the Senate. Former House Speakers Rick Johnson, Chuck Perricone, Lewis Dodak and Gary Owen are just a few of the legislators who turned lobbyist.
Former Michigan Insurance Consumer Advocate Melvin Butch Hollowell said that most of the state’s insurance commissioners have taken jobs in the industry after leaving government service. It raises questions about whether some of their decisions as commissioner were influenced by the desire to please their future bosses, he said.
Gov. Snyder is a strong proponent of transparency in government, and he proposed an ethics package when he was running for governor in 2010. Among other things, he called for banning all gifts from lobbyists, cooling-off periods, and regulation of issue advertising.
But while Snyder achieved many of his campaign goals after taking office in 2011, these reforms were put on the back burner. Robinson said lawmakers are unlikely to take action unless the public demands it, and so far citizens have shown little interest.
“The Legislature fundamentally is a position between interest groups and the citizens,” Robinson said, “and it’s easier to just throw in your lot with the interest groups.”
Leonard Street Farmers' Market
On Thursday March 8, anthropologist Jayson Otto shared the history of Grand Rapids’ farmers’ markets as part of the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council “Grand Rapids Women and the Politics of Agriculture” series. From 1800 through 1946, the number of farmers’ markets steadily rose throughout the US. Grand Rapids was very much a part of this trend, especially from 1914 through 1928, when food costs soared due to the rising dominance of industrialized food production and distribution.
While industry leaders heavily influenced city government to quash the rise of farmers’ markets here, two forces prevented this from happening: farmers resisting through civil disobedience and women working together in a local movement to keep the markets open.
The other sources for food in the city were the many neighborhood grocers as well as the hucksters, underclass folks who sold produce from their carts. The grocers had the power to approve which hucksters could sell this food–and often it was not very fresh.
Around the turn of the century, grocers and food brokers influenced City Hall to outlaw farmers from retailing their wares along stretches of downtown streets, as was their custom. Retailing was discouraged at the wholesale market, which was a food distribution hub to all of Michigan and beyond. However, the small farmers continued to set up their illegal retail stalls–and people continued to go to them for fresh produce for some time. A woman vegetable grower from Wyoming, Mrs. Stall, was among those who resisted.
According to history that Otto was able to unearth, one tough market advocate who made the press of that day, August Raditz, was a white working class woman living on South Division Avenue. She was known for being handy with a scythe and standing up to city hall.
However, upper class white “club” women, Eleanor Nickleson, Helen Russell, Eva Hamilton and Emily Chamberlain were the identified leaders of the woman-led movement. They gathered momentum to establish retail farmers’ markets through a “High Cost of Living” campaign that eventually garnered support from the local Cabinetmakers union, businessman, Charles Leonard, of refrigerator fame, and the mayor of Grand Rapids. (Hamilton went on to be Michigan’s first woman senator). I n spite a strong opposition by male civic leaders, the result was three permanent farmers’ markets in the city: Leonard Street Market, South Division Market (at Cottage Grove) and Fulton Street Market.
When the farmers’ markets were met with threats of being closed in 1934 and 1955, women-led initiatives kept them open. While Otto was able to find photos and information about the Leonard Street Market up to its destruction in the 60s by urban renewal, the demise of the South Division market s seems to be undocumented. He guessed that the 1968 racial uprising may have been the cause.
The encouraging part of Otto’s presentation was the radical role that women have taken in establishing food security in Grand Rapids in the past. The discouraging piece was the lack of historical data around the role that people of color played in Grand Rapids farmers’ market history.
Do you have any recollections of the South Division Market or other farmers’ markets serving Grand Rapids people of color? If yes, please contact the local, women’s grass roots organization, Our Kitchen Table (OKT), OKTable1@gmail.com. The women of OKT are working for food security in Grand Rapids neighborhoods through the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market and food gardening programs. Knowing this history could bring another lost bit of important Black history to well deserved light.
The cost of war in Iraq on the 9th anniversary to the taxpayers of Michigan – $18 billion and counting
Today is the 9th anniversary of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that began on March 19, 2003.
Much has been written in the past about the US war in Iraq, but since there was a draw down of US troops at the end of 2011, the assumption is that war/occupation is over.
The fact is that the US maintains an ongoing troop presence even after the Status of Forces Agreement known as SOFA. There is no consensus on exactly how many US soldiers remain in Iraq, but former State Department member Peter Van Buren, who served in Iraq, estimates there are at least 17,000 US personnel operating in Iraq, many of whom are soldiers. The difference is that these soldiers were transferred from being under the command of the US military to the US State Department.
The ongoing function of the US soldiers and State Department staff is to maintain security for the US embassy in Baghdad, plus operate and protect at least 15 other facilities throughout the country, most of which are military bases. There are also thousands of private mercenaries still operating in Iraq as contract soldiers through the US government.
The other major function of US troops and State Department specialist is to make sure that Iraq’s vast oil resources continue to be exploited by foreign oil companies, a fact that independent journalist Dahr Jamail reported on earlier this year.
The US invasion/occupation of Iraq was never about WMDs or promoting democracy, it was always about gaining access to Iraq’s oil resources and setting up permanent military bases for greater control of the Middle East.
The question that those of us who claim to stand for justice is, at what cost was/is the ongoing US occupation of Iraq? What follows are not just statistics or bullet points, but realities in which the US should be held accountable for and pay massive reparations. This is an important point, because despite the claims that President Obama got us out of Iraq, his administration not only maintains an occupation and he never acknowledged that the war/occupation was unjust. Obama has said he thinks the justification that Iraq had WMDs was wrong, but he has never said the US invasion/occupation was wrong.
The costs of the 9 years of the US invasion/occupation are also not completely adequate, since they do not reflect the cost of the 1991 US war against Iraq that devastated the country, nor the 13 years of US imposed sanctions on Iraq that resulted in at least 500,000 dead Iraqi children.
However, in this list we will limit the cost to just the past 9 years. These costs are not in any particular order of importance.
1. $802 Billion and counting – this is the amount of US tax dollars that have been spent so far on the war/occupation of since 2003, according to the National Priorities Project. That amount translates into $18 billion leaving the State of Michigan to fund the war in Iraq and $288 million and counting that has left Grand Rapids. We start with the monetary costs to US taxpayers, because it demonstrates the absurd priorities of the US government, especially when so many Americans are living in poverty, losing their homes and have no health care.
2. 1,455,590 – this is the number of Iraqis who have died from the US invasion/occupation since 2003, according to Just Foreign Policy.
3. 4486 – this is the number of US soldiers that have died in Iraq since March of 2003, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
4. Billions in war contracts – Private companies have made out like bandits by profiting off of so-called reconstruction projects as well as benefiting from the alteration of the Iraqi Constitution, which opened up their economy to allow foreign multinationals to plunder Iraq’s wealth. (see Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine)
5. Radioactive Iraq – Iraq is highly contaminated by the US military’s use of Depleted Uranium in both the 1991 war and the 2003 war/occupation. The Depleted Uranium will plague Iraq for generations to come with birth defects, leukemia and cancer.
6. Torture of thousands of Iraqis – The legacy of US perpetrated torture in Iraq is hard to quantify, but we know that thousands of Iraqis were detained and tortured by US military personnel according to numerous source, including Wikileaks documents. While there were some low level soldiers prosecuted for these crimes, no high ranking official – the ones who gave the orders – were ever charged or prosecuted for torture.
7. Environmental destruction from the war/occupation – Little has been written about the ecological consequences to the US war/occupation, but desert eco-systems have been destroyed, there has been a massive die off of wildlife and contamination left from the burning of oil fields to the use of Depleted Uranium.
8. Over 2 million Iraqi refugees – there is no exact amount, but the United Nations and the Red Crescent both estimate that over 2 million Iraqis fled their homes and the country over the past 9 years of war and occupation.
9. Increased anti–American sentiment – It should not be a surprise to anyone that the US war/occupation of Iraq not only increased the amount of acts of terror against the occupying forces, it has created a whole generation that has nothing but contempt for the US. This anti-American sentiment is impossible to quantify, but it is likely to have devastating effects for years to come.
A People’s History of the LGBTQ Community in Grand Rapids this Saturday at The Network
If you didn’t get a chance to come to the premier screening of A People’s History of the LGBTQ Community in Grand Rapids in November or you want to see it again, The Network is hosting a screening this Saturday.
The LGBT Network of Western Michigan is inviting anyone to join them this Saturday, March 24 at 6:30PM at their space located at 34 Atlas St. SE in Grand Rapids.
There will be lots of food and a discussion to follow the film. The documentary runs an hour and 40 minutes and covers a period from the 1970s through the present, with an emphasis on the late 1980s and 1990s. Those attending the film will hear directly from those that organized and took the risks to fight for equality in West Michigan.
Come hear how the first Pride Celebration was organized, the fight to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance ion Grand Rapids, the fight against HIV/AIDS, Sons & Daughters, the backlash from the Religious Right and the history of LGBTQ organizing at GVSU.
The film screening is free and copies of the documentary will be available for those who want a copy. There is also Facebook page for this event.
If you can’t make it, you can watch the film online as well as view lots of archival documents, pictures, video and all the entire interviews conducted for this project.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 