It was recently revealed that a certain German Fuhrer was of Jewish and African heritage. To read the piece from Time magazine, click here. To ponder the monstrous nature of the revelation, click nowhere. Just sit there.

On August 1, 2010 in a piece posted to AnnArbor.com, John Hieftje said,  ”I think it’s [the opposition] a Tea Party-like movement. Very similar to the Tea Party, we have people involved in this movement who have never been involved in city government, never even applied to serve on a board or a commission, and yet they want to lead the city.”

I’m not, of course, comparing Hieftje to Hitler. I’m merely pointing out that irony comes in all shapes and sizes, that some local politicos shovel the Schwachsinn faster and deeper than others, and that uncovering the truth takes careful analysis and a look at the candidate’s campaign finance forms, well, not just a look—which is what AnnArbor.com recently did—but a really close look and a willingness to connect some pretty obvious dots. 

“Candidates in Washtenaw County spent thousands on campaigns, new finance reports show,” trumpets the AnnArbor.com September 3, 2010 headline. Dog bites man campaign finance coverage. Woof. Yawn. Scratch. 

For kicks, AnnArbor.com’s Ryan Stanton includes a few graphs about a campaign finance violation “revelation” in his post:

His [Hieftje's] reports also show somewhat of an oddity — a $6 donation from his campaign to the Ann Arbor-based nonprofit Ecology Center, accompanied by a letter from Heiftje’s campaign treasurer, Leah Gunn.

Gunn acknowledged the campaign violated state law by accepting an anonymous $6 contribution, which she characterized as “money in the dish,” and reporting it. The remedy for these types of situations, according to state law, is to donate the money to a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and Hieftje’s campaign chose the Ecology Center.

“It was me entirely,” Gunn said by phone, taking credit for the campaign finance violation. “I should have known better, but at least we did have a remedy.

The campaign finance violation “uncovered” by Stanton in September happened in July, actually, and was revealed in the initial campaign finance filings. Whatever. It’s six bucks. It’s the creepy, treacly reporting of County Commissioner Leah Gunn taking “credit” for the campaign violation that is almost the best part of the piece. 

Almost. 

Buried, in the middle of the AnnArbor.com post is this sentence: “Hieftje took $1,000 from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters.” Woof.

First of all, the $1,000 donation John Hieftje “took” from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters on July 29, 2010, was reported as a “late” donation in the post campaign filing. That the donation was made “late,” meant it could be kept secret until after the election. A curious sort might wonder why the union gave the money “late.” Here’s one possible explanation. The busy carpenters at the over-budget Temple to the Three Judicial Dieties/Herbert Dreiseitl Water Sports building couldn’t put down their T-squares long enough to make out the $1,000 check to John Hieftje.

Here’s a more plausible explanation. Arranging for “late” donations is a way to hide them until after the election. In fact, John Hieftje has a long history of getting “late” donations from PACs. It goes back to his first mayoral campaign: Disclosed on 10/30/2000: donation from the Ann Arbor Area Apartment Association, PAC candidate account; donation from the Transport Workers Union PAC.

But why would Hieftje need to be sneaky and hide the Michigan Regional Council of Carpentars donation?

Because while John Hieftje and his political pals were running as the pure-blood “progressive” Democrats, Ann Arbor’s mayor and First Ward Council candidate Sandi Smith were taking money from a union whose PAC supports Republican candidates and county Republican parties. It’s tough to sell your fairytale facade as the uber-progressives with donations from a PAC that supports Republican candidates mucking up your campaign finance disclosure forms. Just ask Representative Pam Byrnes, whose campaign for State Senate was derailed in Ann Arbor by a postcard put out by a Republican-financed PAC supporting her candidacy. 

On Labor Day, a piece in the Detroit Free Press about the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters appeared. Titled, “Breaking with Dems, carpenters union planning to back Snyder,” it was reported that: “The carpenters union supported Republican Dick Posthumus’ gubernatorial bid in 2002, and has given money to Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and the Oakland County Republican Party. John Hieftje, Dick Posthumus, and L.Brooks Patterson. There’s a picture worth $1,000 words, don’t you think? Union officials from the  Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters held a press conference on Labor Day to announce that the group’s PAC was backing Republican Rick Snyder whose running mate, Brian Calley, favors making Michigan a right-to-work state. Go figure. 

Of course, since his self-proclaimed successful “reorganization” of Ann Arbor City government, John Hieftje has worked hard to bring Ann Arbor closer to winning an award as Michigan’s first right-to-work city government—all thanks to the large number of temporary employees hired each year, and by voting to exempt the city from its own Living Wage Ordinance.

On July 29th John Hieftje took a “late” $1,000 donation from a union PAC that supports Republican candidates, and two days later he was whispering in the ear of the local media about a supposed “Tea Party-like” movement looking to oust the “experienced,” uber-progressive Dems already in office.

To ponder what it means to play the part of the hypocrite with amazing alacrity, click nowhere. Just sit there and repeat after Hizzoner: Aber ja, mein leibchen!  

For some reason, I am forever mixing up Memorial Day with Labor Day. It’s kind of like mixing up the Gabor sisters, Eva and Zsa Zsa. Which one played Lisa on “Green Acres?”

Anyway, I’m at a baseball game with the tater tots. It’s the last regular season game of my favorite team, the Toledo Mudhens. Wondering what in the hell is a mudhen? Look it up. Thanks to “sharply” reduced revenues here at A2P, like city officials, we’re tightening our belt—around your neck. I’m doubling my own pay, and giving all of the top A2P management the option to cash out hundreds of vacation hours, along with several thousand dollar lump sum payments. What does all this mean to you? No more definitions of common English nouns, such as “tampion.” Please note, there is now a fee to tell you that tampion should not be confused with tamping, tamp dancing, or that 60s singing group the Tamptations. In a year, A2P staff will pull out a comprehensive “study” that shows bloggers in Madison have raised their “fees.” So we’ll raise fees. They’re among the lowest in the state, after all. Besides, it’s a medically proven fact, according to First Ward Council/Downtown Development Authority board member Sandi Smith, that higher fees for anything increases turnover at downtown parking meters. Somehow. Somewhere. 

I digress. 

So, if you’re reading this, rest assured that I’m thinking of you. For the first time ever I’m giving readers a preview of the entire upcoming week’s content, along with a snippet of each post. How do I know what I’m going to write about? I consult the Psychic Hotline regularly. It’s staffed by members of Ann Arbor City Council who have developed the amazing ability to know how they’re going to vote on things before they ever hear a single public comment. Some call such behavior vote-rigging, but I prefer to think of it as astounding clairvoyance.

Here’s what readers have to look forward to next week:

Coming on Tuesday: The Politics of Boondoggles: “Creating More Job Announcements Than Real Jobs”

“Creating More Job Announcements Than Real Jobs”: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Oops, I did, 24 months before the conservative-leaning folks at the Mackinaw Center, and editors at the Lansing State Journal decided to jump on the bandwagon and actually wonder how in the names of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff it’s possible to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on “job creation” programs that have led to the creation of jobs, mostly, for the people employed by the agency spending the hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

Here at A2Politico, I’ve been questioning the veracity of the out-sized “job creation” and “job retention” claims made by the good old boys (and girls) at the local “job creation” entity, Ann Arbor SPARK, for the past year.

So who’s getting an A2P mention in Tuesday’s piece? Some of the boldface type includes: Mackinaw Center, Ann Arbor SPARK, Katherine Yung, Matt Kraner, Tony Dearing and Laurel Champion, AnnArbor.com, Lansing State Journal, Ned Staebler and Carsten Hohnke.

Coming on Wednesday: A2P Grillin’ the Media: AA.com ‘Dog Bites Man’ Campaign Finance Coverage

“Candidates in Washtenaw County spent thousands on campaigns, new finance reports show” trumpets the AnnArbor.com headline. Dog bites man.

….Just in case you were wondering, that campaign finance violation was revealed in the initial campaign finance filings, due in July, before the election, not the post campaign filing, and the $1,000 John Hieftje took from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters was reported as a “late” donation. Ryan Stanton either missed the campaign finance violation when he did his piece on the first round of candidate filings, or he deliberately chose to overlook it, because of the amount involved.

As for the late donations from the PACs, arranging for “late” donations is one way to hide them from scrutiny until after the election. It would have been interesting to note that John Hieftje has a history of getting large “late” donations from individuals, as well as PACs of unions doing business with Ann Arbor. The “late” donations began the first year he ran. 

So who’s getting an A2P mention in Wednesday’s piece? Some of the boldface type includes: Ann Arbor Area Apartment Association, John Hieftje, Leah Gunn, Roger Hewitt, Linda Diane Feldt, Jeremy Peters, and the Downtown Development Authority.

Coming on Friday: The Politics of Feeding At the Trough: Heavenly Brownfield Money & Zingerman’s

….To put this into perspective, according to a July 2010 piece in the Wall Street Journal, celebrity chef Mario Batali’s 50,000 square foot upscale Italian gourmet emporium, scheduled to open mid-September in Manhattan, is projected to ring up $50,000,000-$100,000,000 in annual sales. Batali’s emporium model is similar to the Zingerman’s model though much bigger than Zing’s proposed 10,340-square-foot addition connected to the original 5,107-square-foot building. According to Crain’s, “The deli [Zingerman's] is projected to generate $10.9 million from August 2009 through July 2010.” 

Other than size, there’s one major difference between Mario Batali’s new emporium and Zingerman’s proposed expanded Detroit Street emporium. Mario Batali isn’t hitting up the taxpayers of his city or state to fund his business expansion. The owners of Zingerman’s are angling for a hand-out from the taxpayers of Ann Arbor, as well as Michigan to make their dream of expanding their foodie empire a reality. 

So who’s getting an A2P mention in Friday’s piece? Some of the boldface type includes: Washtenaw County Brownfield Development Authority, Ann Arbor Planning Commission, Ray Detter, AnnArborChronicle.com, Mario Batali and Paul Saginaw.

To all my fellow A2Politicos, have a happy Zsa Zsa/Eva Day. I’ll blog at you on Tuesday.

I wanted to finish out the week by reflecting a bit on the past year blogging as A2Politico. First, I’ll thank all who read the blog regularly. When I am remiss in posting, it’s not uncommon to field emails and Facebook messages from readers tapping their feet, electronically. “Wassup? Where’s the next A2Politico entry?” Usually my answer is something like, “I slept very badly last night, and can’t seem to remember my blog password. When I find it, I’ll post the next thrilling installment. Swear to Zeus.”

When I began blogging, I posted two entries per day, as a rule. All the tips I read about building up a readership on a blog were clear: post often. So I did. Between August 2009 and August 2010, I published 236 entries. I have 26 draft pieces sitting around, staring at me every time I login. As most know, I began the blog anonymously. The reasons for doing so were simple: as we saw in the last election, the Axis Powers within the Dem Party have a ruthlessly simply game plan: character assassination. With some help from their friends, they label anyone who runs against them as ignorant of city affairs, dishonest, inexperienced, etc…

Over the past year, the blog has hosted 50,000 unique readers (uniques, as we say in the online media biz), and served up over 1 million pages. Visitors to A2Politico fritter away about 3-5 minutes per visit and read multiple entries. Each month, about 30 percent of visitors are new, and the blog has developed a very loyal following of repeat readers. If you want to talk hits (sites that do are just pulling your leg), A2P has had 3 million of those this past year. Hits, however, refer to little more than the number of times the images on a page were loaded. Sites that brag about hits are like blowsy uncles bragging about, well, things that don’t really matter.

A2Politico was supposed to be fun for me, and it has been. In the past year, thousands of comments have been posted, and those lucky enough to post milestone comments find their screen names enshrined in the A2P Hall of Fame.

Some people have missed the point of A2Politico, I think, people like John Hilton at the Ann Arbor Observer, who sent me several nasty emails about the blog’s content, while it was written anonymously. Who knows, maybe he would have sent similarly cranky emails to me, had he known it was me doing the writing. The bottom line was that the content upset him tremendously. However, unlike John’s publication, I haven’t lost 30 percent of my revenues, and I’m not standing on one leg, holding my breath and waiting around for the advertising dollars from the City of Ann Arbor. He can’t afford to piss anyone off at City Hall, literally. I, on the other hand, can write what I like about local politics.

Over at the AnnArborChronicle.com, bloggers Dave Askins and Mary Morgan, since they couldn’t be in the room with me as I wrote my entries, spent the past year ignoring the fact that A2P existed, even after they recently borrowed a December 2009 entry I’d posted, one of the most popular reads on A2P.

Certainly, John Hieftje hasn’t appreciated A2Politico.com, nor have city managers, accustomed to sticking their hand up the shirts of Hieftje and the majority of Council members, and making them talk. Having someone ask why on earth our city is being run into the ground by a few city staff who spend money like it grows on ash trees, and who’ve been allowed to carve out well-funded fiefdoms, is just not the kind of puppet shows they’re used to putting on. Since it was abundantly clear I wasn’t going to do puppet shows with him, Tom McMurtrie, the city’s solid waste coordinator, and the architect of our new multi-million dollar single-stream recycling program, went so far as to bully his neighbors into removing my campaign yard signs.

In February 2010, Hieftje was first quoted in the Press as saying A2Politico went to his “spam filter.” He never read it, he claimed. Ever. Ever. Ever. I remember thinking to myself, “Does this guy drive a Model T?” Email goes to a spam filter, not blog entries. Then, a few months later, Hieftje was quoted in AnnArbor.com as saying that everything posted to the blog was a lie. Everything. Every. Single. Entry. He’d read them all, evidently. Closely. This revelation came as a shock to several members of PAC, each of whom has complained bitterly to me that John Hieftje never reads anything closely, especially things like studies, reports and pesky memoranda of understanding. He is a notorious “skimmer,” according to those who’ve been shocked by his lack of concern with voting on issues he knows little about.

As for the A2Journal, editor Michelle Rogers gave me an earful via email when I wrote about the paper’s anemic political coverage. “The Heritage Company has won awards for its political coverage,” she snapped electronically. Lisa Allmendinger, the A2Journal writer who covers Ann Arbor, didn’t like reading that I thought her political reporting was a lot like junk food, but she told me later that she enjoys the blog and reads it regularly. The entry, in reality, complimented Allmendinger for taking the City Council to task for habitually starting their interminable meetings late.

So what are my plans for the next year? More of the same, with a twist. I intend to have other writers post to the blog. The Tip Line is open again. If you work for the city, county or some other local government entity and want to share some classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, or ethical significance (think WikiLeaks, only locally), click here to send me an email anonymously. In the meantime, I intend to keep requesting information through FOIA, and holding the feet of our local press to the fire by scooping them, and remembering that the ultimate responsibility for Ann Arbor’s public policies rests with the city’s elected officials. The local media work tirelessly to overlook that inconvenient fact,  maybe so that they can keep getting invitations to those politico parties. 

There’s more than enough going on at City Hall to keep a moderately curious person busy. I’m also going to write about the AAPS, local media, and anything else that strikes my fancy.

Entries, for the time being, will continue to be posted thrice weekly: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If the trends over the past year continue, more readers will read the blog each month than the previous month during the course of the next year. So, if you have a friend, colleague, lover, enemy, or ex-spouse who’s interested in local politics, you know what to do. Tell them the time has come to join the smart kids who read A2Politico. I’d send them an engraved invitation, but my offset printing machine is broken. I loaned it out to a certain city staff member, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t print money with it in the basement of City Hall. And just when Hieftje went and blabbed to everyone that our city officials can’t print money in the basement of City Hall. Whatever. It’s not the forgery I’m worried about at City Hall.

It’s the asbestos and radon. More on that later.

In the meantime, check out the A2Politico “Best of” category. Those dozen posts have, collectively, been read thousands of times. If you have comments, leave ‘em. You can always send along suggestions, as well. I’ll ignore them, of course (this is Ann Arbor), then tell you what I think you want to hear. After some months, finally, you’ll find out that I wasn’t really ever interested in any suggestions in the first place. Don’t be mad. You’ve gotten used to it by now, haven’t you? 

I thought so. Year two, here we come.

Ben Quayle, a 33-year-old lawyer who is running for Congress in Arizona, has revealed that he used to contribute to a website about nightlife in the Arizona city of Scottsdale. Quayle’s comments are said to have included lines such as “My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot.” 

Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor, an entertainment lawyer who was just re-elected to his second term on Ann Arbor City Council, also wrote a couple of “fictional pieces”—though not for a satirical web site, and had a bit of trouble with the needle on his moral compass. In 2009, Taylor sent an email to Third Ward constituents which consisted of a glowing self-evaluation of his work-to-date. Needless to say, he found his performance on Council a spectacular success. Interestingly, First Ward Council member Sandi Smith bragged to voters during her recent bid for re-election that, “I’ve sponsored a lot of legislation. If you go to Legistar, you can search by name and see how many different things I’ve done. I’ve noticed that there are people who have less than I have.” Slamming her colleagues on Council and her opponent, Smith demonstrated that she’s prepared to hold on to that Council seat by trashing anyone.

Taylor’s penchant for writing emails during meetings, and his faulty moral compass were commented upon in an editorial by the local press. To make up for goofing around on the job, literally, Taylor has been working on building a moral compass for everyone on City Council since shortly after he was discovered wandering around town searching for a parking lot. To read about Taylor’s not-so-Herculean efforts to craft an ethics policy, click here, and here. To vote in a poll on whether our Council members have what it takes to craft an ethics policy for themselves, click here.

Ben Quayle, a Republican, and Chris Taylor a Democrat, may not be from the same political party—though there are some in Ann Arbor who have openly suggested several of the “Democrats” on Council are DOCs (Dems of Convenience), but there are some striking similarities between Quayle and Taylor.  

I’ll leave it to you to decide. Ben Quayle. Christopher Taylor. Political twins separated at birth?

I was asked recently to blog about Michigan’s national political scene for the Huffington Post.

For those who don’t read it, HuffPo was founded by Arianna Huffington and is a liberal/progressive news website and aggregated blog. The site gets about 1,000,000 comments per month. I came home from vacation to an email invitation to cover Michigan’s national mid-term elections for the HuffPo. Evidently, some folks there read A2Politico and like the blog’s political content and my writing. So, I’ll be penning weekly entries about one of the dozen most important races for the United States Congress—Michigan’s 1st Congressional District race for the hot seat being vacated by Congressman Bart Stupak.

I thought it might be fun to share my Huffington Post entries with my readers here at A2Politico. I’ll have an opportunity to travel up to the Upper Peninsula during September and October to cover the race and attend campaign events for Democratic candidate and Michigan House Representative Gary McDowell. 

Interestingly, as you’ll read in my first entry, there is a connection between McDowell and one of our local political families. NRCC leaders are eyeing Stupak’s seat, and are poised to paint McDowell as a “career politician,” and a rubber-stamp stooge for out-going Governor Jenny G. This race, I’m guessing, is going to get very nasty come September. The race is also going to make history as there is a Tea Party candidate poised to jump in who will be funded to the tune of at least $1 million dollars. (Hint: Keep that amount in mind as you read my entry.)

I’m thrilled to have a chance to blog for the Huffington Post, where millions of readers go regularly for their dose of political commentary and coverage. I’ll be blogging about politics for HuffPo along with Rahm Emanuel, Bill Maher, Norman Mailer, Nancy Pelosi and Al Franken.

Wish me luck.   

A visit to Michigan Representative Gary McDowell’s campaign web site, and a casual observer comes away with the impression that Democrat McDowell is a folksy fellow who supports K-12 education, and is concerned with trade, healthcare and the right to keep and bear arms. State Representative McDowell, who was first elected to the Michigan 107th District House seat in 2004, wants to represent Michigan’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives—a seat vacated by U.S. Representative Bart Stupak.

On his campaign web site, McDowell stresses his background as a farmer. Visitors to the site read this: “For most of my life, I have started my summer by going out to our family’s fields and cutting hay — just as so many families here in the Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan have done for generations.” This Gary McDowell is a native of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a hay farmer who owns a 1,000 acre spread with his brothers, a member of the Lion’s Club in his hometown of Rudyard, Michigan, a hamlet with just 1,300 residents.

The campaign web site, however, paints a deceptively Norman Rockwell-like picture of Old McDowell. 

His state race campaign finance records paint a portrait of a politico who’s less Norman Rockwell and more Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf. The records also provide tantalizing clues to as why, perhaps, Gary McDowell may have been tapped by the National Democratic Party to try to keep Stupak’s seat in the Dem family. In 2008, McDowell raised $93,916 dollars to run against a Republican challenger who scraped together just $2,575. That year, it was McDowell’s top donors that should give pause. They included the Washington, DC-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Kathy Angerer Leadership Fund, Michigan Health and Hospital Association, UPS, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Michigan Association of Health Plans, Blue Cross of Michigan and the Michigan Medical Society. In 2008, McDowell collected 196 donations, 40 of which came from Lansing-based PACs and political committees, and totaled close to half of the $93,916 he raised.

In his 2006 state House re-election bid, Gary McDowell raised $256,288 and beat back a Republican challenger who’d raised $317,402. That year, McDowell enjoyed several $5,000 hugs from the political funds of new Lansing pals Andy Dillon, Alma Wheeler-Smith, Kathy Angerer, and Andy Meisner. To put this into perspective, in 2006 Representative Alma Wheeler-Smith gave McDowell the same amount from her Take Back PAC, that she gave to daughter-in-law, Rebekah Warren for her 2006 run for the 53rd House seat. After just two terms in office, Farmer McDowell revealed himself to be a fundraising savant, a politico who could land big donations from PACs, lawyers, lobbyists and other Lansing heavy hitters. McDowell did all this in a year in which the average candidate for the Michigan House raised $37,530.

As of July 14, 2010, according to campaign finance information filed with the Federal Election Committee, McDowell had raised $146,835 dollars and spent just over $15,000. Of that, over half had been donated by PACs. His Republican opponent, in contrast, has raised $449,090, 68.2 percent of which had been donated by individuals. Interestingly, both candidates had just about the same amount of cash on hand as of July 14th, $130,000. The FEC donor records also hint that the national Democratic Party considers McDowell’s race important. On June 30, 2010, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in Washington, DC funneled four donations totaling $14,500 to McDowell’s campaign war chest.

The reason for the DCCC’s interest in McDowell’s candidacy, and the donations from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are obvious. In an August 8, 2010 post to  CQPolitics, Roll Call contributor Stuart Rosenberg writes, “For Democrats, Rep. Bart Stupak’s retirement couldn’t have come at a worse time.” Rosenberg goes on to write, “Competitive open seats usually follow the direction of the overall cycle, so with House Republicans poised for large gains, it should be no surprise that most of the open seats that flip will be headed their way. The districts at the top of the list are more likely to flip, with at least the first half-dozen looking like no-brainers.”

McDowell’s race, however, was not among Rosenberg’s “no-brainers.”

If past state races are any indication, over the next 6-8 weeks we can expect McDowell to more than double and possibly triple the amount he has raised thus far, and we can expect him to tap political pals from the Michigan House, more PACs and other political committees. Furthermore, if his 2006 Michigan House race is any indication, the fact that McDowell’s Republican opponent has, thus far, significantly out-paced him in fundraising is no guarantee that Stupak’s seat will be among those that Republicans will flip on November 3^rd.

Though Representative Gary McDowell may start his summers making hay when the sun shines, his fundraising track record demonstrates that Old McDowell is no political hayseed.

I like Constance Crump’s thoughtful writing. I particularly like writers who, with a simple question, can get me all tangled up in trying to figure out the answer. I first read Crump’s blog post a few days ago. Initially, I didn’t get hooked. Who cares if Austin has music, Sundance has film, Aspen has comedy and the Bay Area has, well, I don’t know how Crump zeroed in on the single festival she chose? Then, Connie Crump Cicked the ball through the uprights when she wrote, “Ann Arbor has football as our signature event, culture-vulture yearnings to the contrary…what brings most people here on a most consistent basis is football.”

Football is our signature event? Our. Signature. Event. Football is the signature event of the University of Michigan. To say football is our signature event is, well, some very co-dependent reasoning. It’s kind of like saying: My neighbor’s a doctor, so medicine is my forte. Before you slacker profs. employed to teach 9 hours per week, 8 months per year—when you’re not on sabbatical or spring break—get your leather briefcases in a bunch, I’ll make sure to give lip service and say what Crump didn’t. Graduation, not sports, is the signature event at colleges and universities. Allegedly.

Now, I’m going to let those of you who aren’t among the inside Scrabble players in higher education in on a dirty little secret: fewer and fewer colleges students are graduating. That’s right, after spending an average of $11,000 per year on tuition, room and board, close to half of America’s 18,000,000 undergraduate college students never reach the promised land. If you really want to ferret out a possible explanation for why Americans ages 15-24 read, on average, one book per year, or seven minutes per day, look at graduation rates. Then, consider student-athletes. At some schools, non-white athletes have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than earning an undergraduate degree. Before you feel smug, because, obviously, those colleges are all nestled in states that backed coach Jefferson Davis, hold on to your maize and blue butt-warmer. At the University of Michigan, 83 percent of students graduate, and on average, 73 percent of athletes do. A look at the school’s football program should sober you right up. In that program, 58 percent of the white student-athletes graduate, but just 38 percent of the black players do, according to data from Black Issues in Higher Education.

So it is a big deal that only 38 percent of black football players at U of M graduate? Hell yes it is. According to data from the 2000 Census, someone with a bachelor’s degree earns nearly $1 million more over his or her lifetime than a high school graduate. Census Bureau data show a college graduate can expect to earn $2.1 million working full-time between ages 25 and 64, which demographers call a typical work-life period. A master’s degree-holder is projected to earn $2.5 million, while someone with a professional degree, such as a doctor or lawyer, could make even more — $4.4 million. In contrast, a high school graduate can expect to make $1.2 million during the working years. 

Could it be different? You bet. At Boise State University, 24 percent of students graduate, and 54 percent of student athletes graduate. In that school’s football program, 57 of black athletes graduate, and 47 percent of white football players do.

In the higher ed biz, that’s called the “graduation gap,” and excepting Boise State’s record, black student-athletes generally graduate less often than their white teammates. Every time the geeky editors The Chronicle of Higher Education or, (please, God, no) Black Issues in Education feel the need to kick-up some sand at the beach, they publish features about athlete graduation rates in higher education.

Those of you wearing your rose-colored glasses, and who are under the impression that many of the student-athletes who don’t graduate end up turning pro, here’s what The Christian Science Monitor has to say about that:

21% of Division I male athletes want to turn pro.

1% of college athletes go on to play at the professional level.

Football at the University of Michigan, Crump’s so-called “signature event” of Ann Arbor, is about exploitation and big money for the patricians who can afford the tickets, transportation, housing, and who make money off of the people who come to town for the football games, etc.., and not the Saturday afternoon gladiators who play the game. The next time you get invited by Dr. Coleman to one of her comfy lairs at the various stadia, where she hosts donors, politicos and other bigwigs like you, casually bring up the subject of graduation rates of the black athletes. Then run. Fast. Because the burly, yet erudite Deans of the School of Student-Athlete Tutoring will be chasing you. You see, U of M football generates piles of cash for the university and the town on the backs of oodles of black athletes, 62 percent of whom will never enjoy the lifetime earnings income boost an undergraduate degree provides. In her piece, Crump quotes Mary A. Kerr, president of the Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitors Bureau: ”It [U of M football] brings in $80 million for eight home games a year. 60 percent (of people who attend) come from outside of Washtenaw County.”

So why doesn’t Ann Arbor have a nationally-recognized festival all its own? Partially, I think, it has to do with this mentality that the University of Michigan is us. And the fact that there are way too many politicos in office who would kill to get an invite to Coleman’s private viewing box, blaxploitation be damned. The University has never been us, and never will be. The University is the shark, circling, swimming, feeding, hunting for great land deals, like our parkland for U of M’s Fuller Road parking garage. Thus, Ann Arbor serves as a Pilot fish of a town, swimming into the shark’s mouth to clean the predator’s teeth. The Stadium bridges fiasco rests squarely on the shoulders of the current mayor and Council as they approved staff-generated Capital Improvement Plans that did not include the replacement of the crumbling bridge. When City Administrator Roger Fraser went to our university neighbor to ask if, perhaps, U of M could chip in on the Stadium Bridge replacement tab—after all tens of thousands visitors travel over the bridge on their way to football and basketball games—the answer was a resounding “No.” Pilot fish, you see, get little in return for their efforts. Pilot fish should be happy they don’t get eaten, right?

Outside Magazine did a feature recently about the 25 best cities to live in, and in Michigan the magazine editors chose Grand Rapids. The editors wrote: “Where do you end up when you want a community with incredible access to the outdoors, affordable homes, and solid jobs?” Here’s how they described GR:

Michigan’s second-largest city will surprise you. For starters, the regional economy is both more diverse and more robust than Detroit’s—and includes everything from furniture (Herman Miller and Steelcase) to health and beauty (Amway) to footwear (Wolverine Worldwide). Plus, despite the state’s overall woes and high unemployment, G.R. is, dare we say, thriving. In the past few years, it’s gained a riverfront luxury hotel, a medical school, and the world’s first LEED-certified museum. What’s more, the county recently set aside 1,500 acres for a downtown park, and Grand Rapids’ newly established ArtPrize competition—the largest art contest in the world by prize money—resulted in 1,200 works of public art on display throughout downtown.

Connie Crump recognizes that Grand Rapids hit gold with ArtPrize: 

Sadly, Hash Bash and the Naked Mile compete with Tree Town athletics and arts events for regional and national attention. Thankfully, both are endangered or extinct. Plenty of other local festivals fill the calendar but none have taken the crown as ArtPrize has done for Grand Rapids. After only one year, ArtPrize has established an indelible community identity for the city.

Compare how GR put together its ArtPrize competition with how Ann Arbor launched its Percent for the Arts Program, and chose its first project and artist. About GR Crump writes, “Total community involvement was the key to success for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids last year, says the program’s executive director, Bill Holsinger-Robinson. Having a $250,000 first prize and a total $449,000 purse doesn’t hurt, either, he adds.” At just about the same time GR was putting together its ArtPrize competition, Ann Arbor was appointing a group of insiders to the Public Art Commission, people who would have no problem with a Task Force comprised of hand-picked Municipal Center “stakeholders,” recommending the first project be awarded to a German artist. The city’s web site explains away the hiring of the German artist this way: 

Because the water-related project had to be designed in time to be incorporated into the basic infrastructure of the building, the Public Art Task Force decided to commission one artist to begin working on a design immediately. It recommended Herbert Dreiseitl.

Thus, Ann Arbor used a selection process that enraged local artists and shut out, rather than encouraged the participation of large numbers of artists and citizens. Meanwhile, Grand Rapids devised ArtPrize with a process that was described by the program’s executive director, Bill Holsinger-Robinson thusly, “A lot of what we did last year was based upon one-on-one outreach, really — and a lot of trying to stay out of the public’s way and (let them) determine how they were going to participate. Even though art was the focus of the event, the community played on the main stage. We make everything as accessible to participate in as many ways as possible.”

Grand Rapids is becoming a cutting edge community, and Ann Arbor is becoming Little Southfield, a bugie bedroom berg.

Yet, here in A2, our Pilot fish Mayor and Council act as though they could show those Grand Rapids Gramublicans a thing or two about how a cool, cutting edge city works. [Please note: Versions of this same clever strategy  are currently being used to try to privatize Huron Hills Golf Course, and to dispose of public land next to the Library downtown.]

First, John Hieftje creates and hand picks a National Festival Task Force from among Hizzoner’s political pals, donors, present political appointees or, better still, his basketball buddies.

Next, Council quickly rubber stamps all of the appointments.

Second Ward Council member, Stephen Rapundalo, when running for re-election in 2011, will refer to the rubber-stamping of mayoral appointments as an example of “efficiency in city government” which he “spearheaded.” Ann Arbor CFO Tom Crawford will be quoted by Rapundalo as swearing to Zeus that rubber stamping board and commission appointments saves someone, anyone, everyone, really, $15 million dollars. Rapunds will boast (modestly) that the $15 million in savings is, well, “a conservative estimate. It’s probably more, like a brazilian million.” Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins, in her campaign for re-election, will claim to have spearheaded the same rubber stamping initiative, and to have saved the same brazilian million dollars. For good measure, she’ll claim to be safeguarding the money by keeping it in her purse. Third Ward Councilman Steve Kunselman, in his bid for re-election in 2011, will rail ad infinitum against rubber stamping and promise to end it. Someday. Soon. Really. Fifth Ward Councilman, Mike Anglin, will present a resolution to end rubber stamping—only to lack a second. First Ward Council member Sabra Briere will explain in such a way that only the reporter from the AnnArborChronicle.com can understand, why she couldn’t second Anglin’s resolution to end rubber stamping of mayoral appointments. “I was possibly, probably, rarely in favor of Anglin’s proposal,” Briere will email later to confused constituents to whom she’d spoken in support of the resolution.  

Next, the National Festival Task Force will meet monthly, and the city staff assigned to “help” the group will decide exactly what kind of festival Ann Arbor should have. This will be done without ever having to bother with a single public hearing. Yet evidence of more efficiency in government, Stephen Rapundalo/Marcia Higgins will claim on their campaign literature. CFO Crawford will tell the eager local press that public hearings cost the city exactly $15 million dollars per year, or at least he thinks they do. Could be more. Could be less. “I’m just not sure I understand the definition of the word ‘cost,’” Crawford will explain.

Then, once festival plans have been finalized, the National Festival Task Force will be replaced by the Ann Arbor National Festival Commission. (For an appointment to this commission, please see above and start practicing your jump shot or starting saving your money). A National Festival Administrator will be hired full-time, and the Administrator’s salary, benefits, private school tuition for up to three children, retirement, vacation, car and clothing allowances would be paid out of the Economic Development Fund, Water and Sewer Fund, with a dash of cash from the Fleet Fund.

Four years later, the Ann Arbor National Festival Commission will announce to a stunned public who’d forgotten there was a National Festival Commission, that the first annual Ann Arbor National Pilot Fish Fry Festival is scheduled to be held on Whitsuntide in the spacious party room at Arbor Brewing Company, with entertainment provided by the members of the Downtown Development Authority, who are renowned for their ability to tell stories, sing, dance and play jokes on taxpayers.

Connie Crump may wonder why Ann Arbor has no national festival to call its own, but in reality the answer is as plain as the fried Pilot fish on her plate.

I paddle my kayak regularly from Bandemer Park, the site of a Punk Week gathering that made big news in this town of ours. I wasn’t there the afternoon the Ann Arbor Police Department car responded and the officer found himself out-numbered. Of course, given the fact that there are only 5-7 officers patrolling the entire town on a given day, with a single patrol car cruising Charlie Sector (the part of town in which Bandemer is located), the officer inside the patrol car would have expected to be out-numbered. That’s why the officer called for back-up. There was chicken on the grill and swimming going on at Bandemer. Someone was, perhaps, even swimming without the benefit of a bathing machine. The delicate Victorian sensibilities of some passerby at Bandemer that afternoon were offended. Evidently, the police showed up because some local prude had dimed out the Punk Week rabble gathered at the park.

Here’s the Ann Arbor definition of Punk Week:

That’s when a 25-year-old woman puts in her earbuds, turns up her iPod, and pays AATA to haul her from Ypsilanti to Ann Arbor to some low-paying job for some high-earning bugie business owner who lives in Pittsfield Township.

Oh, sorry. Our punk should not be living in Ypsilanti. She should be living in some ramshackle Ann Arbor rental house owned by Dan Pampreen with 15 other Gen Y punks. The house will have been last inspected by City inspectors when Old Hickory was president. (Being super-tight with Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke has to have some perks, doesn’t it?) Our punk will be hopping on one leg, dying to rent “work force” housing brought to her by local developocrat Alex de Perry or the develop-beard Avalon Housing that will be, they promise, swear to Dog, the shit (not to be confused with shitty). After all, if they’re not working for Google billionaire Sergey Brin for $40K per year, or waiting tables for $30,000 per year at some downtown restaurant owned by Downtown Development Authority authority Roger Hewitt, or the fine folks at Main Street Ventures, what the hell good is a Gen Y punk? Heck, what good is anyone who’s not white (or who talks white really well), upper-middle class, and who feels virtuous that they’re over-filling their single-stream recycling container every single week?

Wake up and smell the idea that Ann Arbor is an urban center distinct from Detroit (or so goes the fantasy). That, after all, is the goal of the present batch of politicos in office. That’s why we desperately need a convention center. Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo  is the MichBio CEO about town, and he does natter on about the fact that there’s no place is this God forsaken berg to host a conference with 500 attendees. Really? I think what he means is that there is no Ann Arbor taxpayer-direct subsidized place to put on a conference with 500 attendees. No matter that the Michigan League has ample space to host a meeting with 500 attendees and then some. 

In a post from December 2009, I wrote: 

As expected, the conference center proposal from Valiant Partners closely follows the proposal that was secretly circulated and pitched by City Administrator Roger Fraser to City Council members in January 2009 at the City Council’s retreat. 

The proposal includes two letters of recommendation from University of Michigan deans. The first is Dr. James O. Woolliscroft, MD, Dean. Is it me, or does his letter of “endorsement” sound like it was written while sitting under a naked bulb with water boarding apparatus nearby? The two sentence (seriously, two sentence) letter says, “A conference center that will allow Ann Arbor to host large events is desirable, and I support efforts to make this reality.” Replace “conference center” with bawdy house, and we have a space to meet Dr. Woolliscroft’s needs, n’est pas? The other “endorser” was the Dean David C. Munson, Jr., Dean of Engineering. “We have a strong need for a space for plenary sessions with 500 participants and break-out sessions of 75 participants,” writes the Dean of Engineering. Oh, it should be “centrally” located, as well. Yo, Dr. Munson, the Second Floor Ballroom at the Michigan League holds 500 nicely. In fact this handy room capacity document shows that the Michigan League has all the space for which Dr. Munson says Ann Arbor has a “strong need.” Thus, why he “strongly endorses the need for a conference center” remains a mystery….or not.

We need more conference attendees in Ann Arbor, not Gen Y punks. Wait, what about brainy Gen Y punks who attend conferences? Well, all the brainy Gen Y punk grad students are at the Modern Language Association conference in ______________ (fill in the name of a fun, large, metropolitan area that Ann Arbor will never be able to compete with). They’re wearing impossibly small glasses, fretting about post-deconstructionism, and attending guerilla workshops on what to do when your thesis advisor repeatedly hits on you (Hint: sexual harassment charges are tiresome and bad for one’s academic career, that is the academic career of the individual who levies the charges).

The not-so-brainy comments at AnnArbor.com from the site’s devoted readers who live in Howell, Brighton, Dexter, Chelsea, Saline and out-of-state were full of reasons why punks are unwelcome in Ann Arbor. Punks smell. Punks do drugs. Punks listen to music in public. Punks swim naked. Punks grill chicken without a permit. Punks look unkept. Punks are dirty. Punks are not gainfully employed. Punks are, well, punks. I’m really not sorry to have to burst the bubble of so many small-minded individuals at once, but the above complaints apply to just as many tenured faculty at the University of Michigan as they do to the Gen Y attendees of the impromtu Punk Week festivities. There’s a physics prof at U of M with a wicked reputation amongst the librarian folk as an individual not to be trifled with unless one has a completely stuffed up nose. 

The Bandemer Park Punk Week dust up was proof positive that Ann Arbor is becoming a community the likes of which we last saw in that Ira Levin book. Ann Arbor is no more a Midwestern bastion of progressive liberality, where creative thought and actions are embraced, than is Pyongyang. The AAPD has launched an internal investigation thanks to a complaint filed shortly after eight people were arrested for “resisting officers” on Sunday August 15th. The police charged the people with refusing to leave the park. Maybe Ann Arbor’s mayor should just adopt the tactics of Dearborn’s segregationist hero Orville Hubbard. For decades under Hubbard’s “Keep Dearborn Clean” campaign, non-residents were barred from the city’s parks, pools and recreational facilities. Non-residents could be tossed out of parks by police in Dearborn, just as the AAPD officers tried to toss out non-residents from Bandemer Park. How would the Dearborn police identify non-residents? The same way the AAPD identified the Punk Week participants. They were the people who looked “different.” 

As usual, on AnnArbor.com, just as we saw in the old Ann Arbor News, we hear absolutely not a single peep from the Mayor and City Council members save a comment that, maybe, “permits” need to be issued the next time punks want to grill chicken and swim in the Huron. Then again, when the political shitzu hits the fan, we don’t have elected politicos in Ann Arbor. We have a head-less horseman whose job it is to scare the locals into staying inside unless they pay for a permit. The local news outlets sweetly perpetuate this myth by failing to point out that the Chief of Police answers to the Mayor and City Council. Chief Barnett Jones, after all, went before Council and assured everyone that the AAPD could handle policing with a force that has been severely reduced.

Now, drive your Volvo/Subaru/Prius to Bandemer Park, throw some $20 per pound, free-range, organic chicken on the grill, strip to your 100 percent organic cotton skivvies, hop in the river, and imagine the AAPD responding to a disturbance the size of the one at Bandemer Park times 10 or 100. Stop screaming. No one can hear you. No one wants to hear you. Repeat after John Hieftje: “Crime is down. Crime is down. Crime is down. Crime is down.”

I was told by AAPD police officials that our police department simply won’t ever be able to respond to any kind of a large disturbance. Of course, voters re-elected a mayor who assured them that if crime ever goes up (as if crime is a generic noun) he’ll look into beefing up the police force. Will that be before or after you or someone you know gets assaulted, I wonder? Well, if the Bandemer Park fiasco demonstrates one thing quite clearly it should be that it won’t be a little old crime spree that obviates the need for more than 5-7 patrol officers on duty during any given day.

As for the Gen Y punks, professionals, plebes and poseurs, they need to get a clue and realize that the new urbanista Boomers in Ann Arbor—this Mayor and Council—don’t welcome change or Gen Y with open arms. Our little slice of Ira Levinville craves and obsesses about well-behaved, well-mannered, well-heeled “young professionals,” who will bend over, smile and support the well-connected, well-mannered (at least to your face, mostly), much better-heeled business owners, local developers, and local politicos.

This piece, below my comments, comes from Salon. I thought Alyssa Battistoni’s perspective was refreshing, and her look at backdoor privatization captures exactly what is going on in Ann Arbor. Here, in Lake Woebegone-on-the-Huron, where all the men have Ph.D.s, all the woman have Ph.D.s, but are doing “research” on their books at home while raising their children, all of whom are above average, backdoor taxation and backdoor privatization of services are on the rise. Of course, AnnArbor.com’s Simple Simon reporting of Hizzoner’s wild logic that fewer police and firefighters are needed because our city’s “crime rate” has dropped, and firefighters need to hook up to a hydrant less and less has done wonders to assure the plebes that Rome will never burn, or that Alaric will never breach the 100 percent organic, free range city walls and sack the Temple of the Three Judicial Dieties. 

As we all know, those foolish enough to question the fairytales about police and fire safety told by the elected leaders of our city are misleading the public shamelessly, and looking to spark needless alarm amongst the oldsters who, yes, might need to dial 911—if they could find the eleven on their phones, that is. Here’s what we might overhear in the Executive Wash Room at City Hall: the reporters and editors at the New York Times and WSJ are all Tea-Baggers who’ve never even done a shred of work at a single quality news publication!  

Heck, John Hieftje and Roger Fraser are just a single AnnArbor.com government news story away from being able to claim that their systematic decimation of our police and fire coverage has actually resulted in less crime and fewer fires. Yes, fair people of Ann Arbor, if we got rid of our police and fire departments, Ann Arbor, could be just a heartbeat away from winning awards as the only town in the entire United States where there are absolutely no reports of crime made to sworn officers, or reports of fire emergencies made to trained firefighters. As the Police-Court Tin Can goes further and further over-budget with more and more 10-0 votes to allocate General Fund money to the Black Hole of a project by elected leaders, look for City Council to propose the Ann Arbor all volunteer police and fire departments.

A “study” on the switch to all-volunteer police and fire departments prepared by city staff, and given three thumbs up by Roger Fraser, will provide the usual quality research to Council and the public. The report will outline that in Madison, Seattle, Portland, Oz and Wonderland, volunteer police and fire fighters are required to buy their own fire trucks and police cruisers, and volunteers pay their respective cities $100,000 per year each. Volunteer police and firefighters will be appointed by Mayor and Council from among members of PAC, the Housing, Planning and Environmental Commissions. Katherine Talcott, who was hired part-time to administer the Percent for the Art Program, then hired full-time to administer the same program—with her salary being paid from the city’s water-sewer slush fund, will be appointed the Police/Fire Chief. Her appointment will be made just as soon as German (con) artist Herbert Dreiseitl gets an installation for a new fountain for anyone, anywhere completed. 

The Downtown Development Authority (DDA) will be tapped for $2 million dollars per year to pay for the extra management of the Ann Arbor all volunteer police and fire departments. 

Former members of the Downtown Development Authority will go before Council seated in shopping carts, talk about their objections to the back-room dealings that resulted in, well, things they can’t really elaborate on because, well, they might like to be appointed to another board or committee in the future. 

Enjoy the Salon piece. I did.  

It has come to this: Parents are now being asked to send their children to school with their own toilet paper. And not just toilet paper, but all sorts of basic items that schools themselves used to provide for kids. It’s all part of a disturbing trend, highlighted by the New York Times last week, of cash-strapped public schools — their budgets eviscerated by state cutbacks — shifting more and more financial responsibility onto parents.

Privatization meant transferring responsibility for entire programs or functions to the private sector. But with the drastic budget cuts that states have been forced to make, responsibility for public services and programs is literally being forced into private hands one roll of toilet paper at a time. We’ve entered the era of backdoor privatization.

On the surface, these stop-gap measures don’t seem unreasonable. After all, it’s hardly new for parents in well-off school districts to chip in for supplies, music classes and even teacher’s salaries in an effort to minimize the effect of school budget cuts on their children. What is new, though, is the extent to which families are being asked to contribute basic items. This may be too much to ask of parents who are struggling to pay their own bills — especially since they’ve already paid taxes that are supposed to support the public school system.

Nor is backdoor privatization a phenomenon limited to local schools.

Public university systems are increasingly emulating private universities by turning to wealthy alumni for donations — even as tuition rises because some legislators see hiking it as a way to raise money for their fungible state budget items.

Missouri, Georgia, and Arizona have been forced to slash their transit budgets and services, leaving hundreds of thousands without a way to get to their jobs, or to a doctor, or school. This has forced thousands of people to revert to private modes of transportation.

Many states have also cut funding for fire and police departments, resulting in slower emergency response times and diminished crime investigation. Fire department cuts have exacerbated the trend in wildfire-prone areas (among those who can afford it) of hiring private firefighting companies to protect homes, heralding a return to the 19th-century practice in which private firefighting companies raced each other to put out blazes and collect their reward.

Some towns have even started to shut off street lights to save money on electricity bills.

This backdoor privatization diminishes the quantity and quality of the services available to the general public while nurturing the growth of a parallel profit-making infrastructure for those who can afford supplementary services.

Presumably, such budget cuts are temporary, a product of the recession. But it’s not hard to imagine a future in which, say, ever-strapped state and local governments decide to follow the private sector’s lead in taking advantage of new “efficiencies.” In fact, some schools are already refraining from hiring needed teachers despite receiving federal dollars to help tide them over for the year. And even temporary cuts can do a lot of damage: Public transportation reductions, for example, can force people to give up jobs that require them to commute to work.

Certainly, some budget cuts are necessary in difficult economic times. But when we decide it’s better to turn off street lights and shut down bus lines than to raise taxes on the rich, reduce charitable tax deductions, or create a value-added tax, we are deciding that the quality and availability of the public goods should be determined by the amount individuals can pay — and not the amount a rich nation can afford. It’s a choice that undermines not only our claim that we value “ordinary Americans” as equals but also our ability to produce the healthy, educated, productive population on which our future prosperity depends.

The best-case scenario is that the impact of these cuts will help people understand just what their tax dollars are paying for and spur greater consciousness about the relationship between public spending and public goods. Now that shortages of teachers and books are spreading to suburbia, we’ll decide that shortfalls in education funding are unacceptable after all.

The worst-case scenario, though, is that reduced public spending on essential goods and services will continue to hollow out our infrastructure and reduce our capacity to meet the needs of most Americans. And that rather than have a real conversation about which public goods we consider essential and what we’re willing to do to pay for them, we’ll gradually starve core programs until working- and middle-class Americans grow accustomed to a lower standard of living while better-off Americans pay out of pocket for benefits that everyone once enjoyed.

Here’s hoping for a wake-up call.

Imitation, as they say, is the most sincere form of flattery. Over the past few months, the off-brand blogger at Arborblahg has posted loads of entries in reaction to the original recipe content at A2Politico. Original content is hard to generate (no sarcasm intended), and so is a food fight when the other guy isn’t cooperating by launching fistfuls of peas or mashed potatoes (electronically). Arborblahg has referred 53 readers to A2P over the past six months. Thanks, but it hardly seems worth the effort to create the hyperlinks, much less sit around composing the entries in reaction to those posted here.

So, if the Arborblahg scribe is out there reading this, I’d like to challenge you to a “dual.” One week. Two topics. I’ll even let you pick the week and the topics, and let’s keep the entries short, say 500-600 words. I’ll post your response and mine here on A2P, and you do the same on your blahg. 

You got game, or you just a big old stable fly content to buzz around and around and around looking for someone else’s content to copy and respond to? You know how to contact me, right? Just put your lips together and blow (sarcasm intended). Then, click the contact link and send me an email.

“Michigan is becoming the nation’s ex,” writes former Concentrate Media Gen Y blogger Katie Rose in a kerchief waving, not-so-tearful farewell/kiss-off to Ann Arbor. Off to a better job in California, Rose pens a blog entry in which she struggles to deal with her own decision to relocate from Google in Ann Arbor to a job at YouTube. Why she struggles with the decision would be a better blog entry, but nonetheless Ms. Rose struggles mightily and Concentrate Media, ever open to punctiliously promulgating blog angst from the Gen Y folks who allegedly trawl the site, duly posts the woman’s “gut wrenching” decision.

Katie Rose spent her previous blog posts at Concentrate Media lecturing to the ether about exactly what Ann Arbor needed to do to make her life more scintillating, make her housing options more affordable and, generally, make her want to live in Ann Arbor. Rose writes in her post-collegiate confessional, “But first, a gut-wrenching confession of epic proportions: I have left Michigan. As winter turned to spring this year, I was offered a PR job at YouTube in California, and the inner conflict began.  When you publicly announce your loyalty to the state — and subsequently abandon those principles for a bigger career opportunity — it’s time to face the music.”

In 1851, Giuseppi Verdi came up with the perfect phrase to describe the situation. One need only purchase a ticket to Rigoletto, and you’ll hear it sung by the cynical Duke of Mantua: “La donna è mobile. Qual piuma al vento. Muta d’accento — e di pensiero.” For those who were dozing during Rigoletto when the subtitles were scrolling, here’s a translation: “This woman is flighty. Like a feather in the wind. She changes her voice — and her mind.” Click here to hear a 1908 recording of Enrico Caruso singing the “La Donna e’ mobile.” 

Katie Rose is fickle. She’s young and fickle. She’s young, fickle, and left an electronic record of a promise. Rose writes, “In the transition, however, there was a lot of reflection…so back to why I think Michigan has become the nation’s ex. I don’t need convincing that this is a great place to have a life, but as I’ve seen more and more friends depart the state, it’s becoming apparent that there are people who do.  But it’s not always the right fit, and sometimes the romance fizzles.”

Yes, sometimes the romance fizzles. Sometimes people realize that having an inexperienced, needy lover who is forever nitpicking isn’t a Love Boat cruise, but rather a romantic nightmare. In such cases it’s entirely appropriate to, well, dump the bitch/bastard, or jump overboard hoping that a passing luxury liner will happen to be plying the waters nearby. Please note: Being adrift in the Sea of Love, then being picked up by a luxury liner is an art form. Elizabeth Taylor is a faculty emeritus at the academy where the skill is taught, so is George Clooney. Tuition is very expensive at that particular academy, and the graduation rates are very low, just so you’re prepared.

Basically, Katie Rose writes that one reason she is leaving Michigan is because her friends are leaving. This is where her youth peeks through. After you get to a certain age and have wasted enough time justifying yourself, you stop. You just do what you want to do, suck it up, and live with the consequences. However, Rose justifies her decision by writing, “If Michigan wants to compete with the other ‘magnetic places’ for youth, it’s going to need to keep up in more categories. We’ll never be a state with the flashing lights of New York, but we should also refuse to accept the consolation prize. We can compliment parks and our small town feel ’til we’re blue in the face, but that makes Ann Arbor a ’safe date’ with a ‘nice personality’ and not someone that inspires you to drop to one knee and make a long-term commitment to.”

Not to be unkind, but the Katie Roses out there are no great prizes, demographically. I wrote in a January 2010 entry titled “The Politics of Demgraphics: Why All the Political Hand-Wringing and Fuss Over Gen Y?”:

Looking for what is called a reliable voter? Look for a white woman aged 70 and above (a Baby Boomer), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Looking for the least reliable voter on whom a candidate should think twice about wasting time, money and literature, the voter who goes to the polls with the least frequency? Look for a white woman aged 18-20, a so-called, Millenial (Gen Y) voter. Spending power? Gen Y’s spending power pales in comparison to that of the peak age group. According to data from U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the average Gen Y individual spends $25,000 per year, and has an annual household income barely above that, somewhere around $35,000 per year. The big earners and big spenders? Those are people in the 35-45 year-old age bracket, Gen Xers. They pull down salaries that average $70,000-$80,000 dollars per year and pump into the local economy, on average, double what Gen Y individuals part with in a year.  

In April of 2010, I wrote in “The Politics of Development: If You Think It’s About Urban Density and Affordable Living, Think Again”:

67.5 percent of people born in Michigan who are 18 years or older have stayed in Michigan. Conversely, only 22 percent of the people currently living in Michigan who are 18 years or older were born in another state. Sticky is where it’s at for demographers. According to the Pew Social Trends study, “In the Midwest, nearly half of adult residents say they have spent their entire lives in their hometown.” That, my fellow native Michiganians, is a huge home court advantage that local, not to mention state-wide politicians overlook in favor of attracting new people to Michigan, particularly  Gen Yers. It’s a losing battle. That demographic is moving South and West, not into the heartland. Gen Xers will relocate to the Midwest for jobs, and do. Make Ann Arbor dual career couple heaven and the Gen Xers will come.

In October of 2009 Katie Rose wrote in another blog entry that Gen Y “demands” are few:

• Monthly rent between $600-$900
• Close proximity to work and social scene (walking/biking distance)
• Option to live alone affordably
• No ‘cookie cutter’ condos – we want places with character
• Flooring that has not seen the ravages of six years of lost beer pong tournaments

These several months later, after she’d left Ann Arbor for Mountainview, California, Katie Rose looks back over her shoulder and electronically quips:

“I would challenge Ann Arbor to commit itself to these three things, which would have made my decision to leave all the more difficult, if not completely obsolete.”

1. Job diversification. I didn’t want to “dump” Michigan. 

2. A dynamic downtown. We lack discovery of new places, and I don’t think the fact that Ann Arbor’s a small town is an excuse. Give us something to explore and keep the chains out. 

3. Knock off the “Us vs. Them” development wars. Before I left, I participated in a few meetings where young people discussed development issues coming before Council. The tone was hopeful, but felt combative. 

Here’s a thought: Maybe being dumped by the Katie Roses of the world isn’t such a tragedy. Google filled her entry-level job with another new grad, no doubt (well, maybe a little doubt, since Google never created the 1,000 jobs it promised when it came here, and demanded tax-subsidized parking). Her apartment has been rented (or at least there’s a 90 percent chance it will be, since Ann Arbor has a 10 percent rental apartment vacancy rate city-wide, at the moment), Starbuck’s and the other chains that have come into the downtown are still slinging hash, selling cups of java, and providing free Wi-Fi. In short, Gen Y is like a footprint in the sand, and the tide of time quickly washes away the slight traces of their residence among us.

I wish Katie Rose luck; I’ve enjoyed her posts even if I’ve not agreed with her conclusions, or found all of her insights illuminating. What I know is this: sometimes breaking up ain’t so bad. What our city is sorely in need of are people who will relocate their established businesses here, provide real jobs, buy houses, pay taxes and be fickle every now and again—but have the money, maturity and good sense to realize that they don’t have to justify it to anyone. Ever.