by Rob Smith

In an August 28, 2012 video interview, Michigan’s Republican governor told WaPo interviewer Nia-Malika Henderson that he and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney “have a lot of similarities.” Snyder urged Romney to “get a positive message out there.” Several times during the interview, Snyder talked about “job creation” and “a future for our kids.” He pitched Michigan as “the comeback state.” Michigan, he suggests, is a “great role model” for Washington, D.C., “which is a mess.”

Interestingly, Snyder told the WaPo “government doesn’t create jobs. We create an environment for jobs to flourish.” Someone needs to remind Snyder that the State of Michigan is spending tens of millions of dollars each year on 12 regional “job creation incubators,” such as Ann Arbor SPARK, which was most recently fingered for having spent $7.7 million in Michigan tax dollars in order to create only 79 jobs.

I wrote in a June 2012 post for A2Politico:

Over the past several years, Ann Arbor SPARK has siphoned millions of dollars away from the public schools through a TIF scam approved by Ann Arbor’s Mayor and City Council. First a financing authority was created (the local LDFA), then the LDFA is funded through tax-increment financing (TIF) similar to the way the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority is supported. A TIF district allows authorities like the LDFA and the DDA to skim the property taxes levied in the TIF district. The local LDFA then contracts with Ann Arbor SPARK for “business development services.”

Looks great on paper. Sounds good at a cocktail party. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. In practice, the LDFA and Ann Arbor SPARK have done little but rob taxpayers, public schools and the District library of millions of dollars. SPARK’s job creation numbers are suspect because the company has never allowed an outside audit, but rather fills out its own report and hands that over to the LDFA.

Keeping those facts in mind, in August 2011 Daily Beast ranked Michigan #1 on a Hit List of the Best States for Job Growth. The online news mag. pointed out, “With job creation shaping up to be one of the core issues of the 2012 presidential race, Newsweek/Daily Beast finds the boom states for business.” So how did DB evaluate states? “To find the 20 best states in America for job growth we considered three factors. First, a new poll and index from Gallup, which asked more than 100,000 employed people whether their companies are expanding or contracting, and provides an index score from the difference between the two; second, the change in seasonally adjusted unemployment rates, from the annual average for 2010 to the annual average to date, with data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; finally, each state’s 2010 average annual income, also with BLS data. Using z-scores (a measure of each state’s performance relative to the mean), each factor was equally weighted. The first two data sets examine opinions on job creation and raw unemployment numbers, while the third takes into account how well, in general, jobs in each state tend to pay. The result is a ranking of the states where, despite the recession, job growth is actually happening.”

Using these criteria, Michigan came out on top.

In May 2011, the right-leaning Mackinaw Center presented a somewhat different view of the same job creation data. Writer James Hohman linked the job creation numbers with the job loss numbers for an interesting interpretation. He writes:

Most news stories focus on the net job gains or losses because these are good indicators of whether an economy is improving or falling. There is a substantial lag to the release of gross job figures, however, making them less important to the day’s news. The monthly net job reports tend to show a state that is fairly stagnant — rarely adding or losing more than 2 percent of jobs in any year.

But the gross job creation and loss figures show the incredible amount of turnover in Michigan. In a given year, the state can add and lose 1 million jobs in gross, leaving no net gain. This means around one out of every four jobs is created and lost in the state every single year.

The latest release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that there were 216,561 private-sector jobs created in the third quarter of 2010, a gain of 6.8 percent of total jobs, or an increase of one job for every 15 existing jobs. The state also lost 191,483 private-sector jobs, a loss of 6.0 percent of total jobs, or a loss of one job for every 17 existing jobs.

Hohman points out that most of the jobs being created in Michigan are not the result of incubators, such as SPARK, but “from expansions and contractions of existing businesses….The state’s economic development programs are targeted at select industries and specific companies. The key areas of job growth and loss, however, are deep and broad and across industries. Incentive programs that look to assist with hundreds and sometimes thousands of jobs simply cannot keep pace with an economy that turns over hundreds of thousands of jobs every quarter.”

Hohman’s analysis explains why while there is job creation in Michigan and unemployment is down from 14.2 percent to 9.4 percent, childhood poverty is still a huge problem. In January 2012, about 6 months after Daily Beast tagged Michigan the best state for job growth, the HuffPost reported that:

An annual report examining the living conditions for children across Michigan finds high poverty rates satewide, and even bleaker news for kids living in the city of Detroit. The most recent Kids Count in Michigan Data Book shows a 13 percent jump in the number of kids living in poverty in the city between 2005 and 2009. It also finds that more than 80 percent of children in Detroit Public Schools now qualify for free student lunches. Jane Zehnder-Merrell, the study’s project director at the Michigan League for Human Services, told HuffPost children in both Detroit and around the state are suffering the impacts of the long recession. ”The general situation [in Detroit] pretty much mirrors what’s happening in Michigan in terms of trends, [but] the level of economic distress in the city is much more acute than the state as a whole,” Zehnder-Merrell said.”

As of January 2012, 23.5 percent of all Michigan children lived below the official U.S. poverty threshold. The 2012 report from the Annie E. Casey foundation indicated that extreme childhood poverty in Michigan has doubled since 2005, and that Michigan’s childhood poverty rates are among the highest in the nation. In Washtenaw County, where Governor Snyder lives, the percentage of kids who qualified for a free or reduced price school lunch rose from from 10,225 in 2005 to 13,886 in 2010. Unemployed adults rose from 8,795 to 14,782 during the same period, and unemployment rose from 4.2 percent to 8.1 percent.

Basically, Snyder suggested that Mitt Romney focus on jobs and kids, kids and jobs. After all, it’s what Snyder focused on in 2010 when running for governor and won. Political pundits rarely agree on everything, but in discussing the 2012 presidential election there is consensus: if Mitt Romney takes Michigan, he will take the White House. There is one other point of agreement between political observers writing about the 2012 election and that is this: Michigan’s governor will be of little use to Romney as he tries to flip the state. Snyder, a GOP outsider, can offer little in the way of an established political base or machine. In fact, Snyder has his own worries. While he has seen improvement in his poll numbers over the last few months—voters are now almost evenly divided on him with 42 percent approving and 44 percent disapproving—he could find himself with a Democratic legislature to work with next year. Democrats lead the generic legislative ballot in the state by a 45/37 margin, numbers that could translate into them regaining control of the State House.

by Rob Smith

Michigan Rising (formerly the Committee to Recall Rick Snyder) tried twice to collect enough signatures to put the question of whether to recall Governor Rick Snyder on the ballot. Twice the group failed. Such signature drives are monster efforts, as we saw in Wisconsin, and rarely successful—again, as we saw in Wisconsin voters’ refusal to recall the state’s Republican governor. I read Michigan Rising’s latest pitch for donations sent out the evening of August 16th. In that email, the subject line of which was “Elections matter, votes count,” I read that Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Pete Hoekstra “is calling for the repeal of the Constitutional Amendment passed in 1913 that made Senate seats elected, not appointed offices.” The email goes on to say, “As you may know, Michigan Rising is busy with a Voter Registration Drive and we need your help to keep candidates whose ideas will make Michigan a less democratic state OUT of office. Please donate $10.00 so that we can show the likes of Hoekstra what democracy in action can do.”

Voter registration drives are classic progressive grassroots activation efforts. Voter registration drives around the country are credited with helping President Obama end up in the White House in 2008. In 2008 the Detroit Free Press published an article that pointed out Michigan had a record number of registered voters, “7,470,764 voters registered before the Oct. 6 deadline to vote in the Nov. 4 election.” Between January and October 2008, over 328,000 Michigan residents signed up to vote! Last year, Crain’s Detroit Business reported on the subject of voter registration from a disturbing angle. The article is titled, “Detroit has more registered voters than residents over 18, Census finds.” While you might shake your head and mutter a quick “WTF?” this is not a “Detroit-only” problem. Crain’s reported:

There are about 560,000 registered voters in the city of Detroit. But the 2010 U.S. Census found only 523,430 Detroiters over 18, according to Data Driven Detroit.*

So that’s a problem.

Detroit’s voter rolls have been plagued by duplicate, incorrect or invalid registrations for a long time, and bringing the lists into compliance is a Herculean task.

“Because of the National Voter Registration Act (of 1983), we are required to hold onto and include in our count those who more than likely be should cancelled because they have moved, relocated and the like, or there has been no activity for a number of years,” City Clerk Janice Winfrey said. “However, we have to hold them for two consecutive federal elections. So after this federal election, by the beginning of 2013, we’ll have nearly 30,000 we can cancel.”

In other circumstances, federal law only allows local election officials to purge a name from the voter rolls when notified by the individual or a reliable source of information (such as a death certificate) that the person is no longer eligible to vote in that district — or if a voter registration card is returned as undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service.

Detroit Director of Elections Daniel Baxter said that his department has been working with the health department and local newspapers to get accurate information about deaths. (Neither dying nor moving automatically purges a voter from the rolls, unless, in the case of the latter, the former resident receives a new driver’s license – and voter registration – in another jurisdiction.)

In Detroit, a highly transient population complicates matters, Winfrey said.

The Crain’s article points out something else, as well:

Detroit – and the state of Michigan – do have high rates of voter registration,’ said Vince Keenan, executive director of nonprofit voter education resource Publius.org, thanks to the national voter registration act, which allows voters to register while applying for a driver’s license or state-issued identificaiton card.

Nationally, according to a July 2012 U.S. Census Bureau report, 71 percent of Americans eligible to vote are registered—146 million people. That’s down from 72.1 percent in 2004, but up from 69.5 percent in 2000. The U.S. Census Bureau points out that “Historically, the likelihood that an individual will actually vote once registered has been high, and 2008 was no exception. Of all registered individuals, 90 percent reported voting, up slightly from 89 percent in the 2004 presidential election.” Registering to vote is the Ticket to the Voting Show. According to a 2012 Census Bureau report on voting, registered voters aged 35-54 are almost 3.5 times more likely to vote than registered voters between the ages of 18-24. In 2008, 4.48 million people (67.8 percent of Michigan’s registered voters) went to the polls, making the 2008 Michigan turnout among one of the highest in the country, topped by only a handful of other states. As far as voting goes, Midwest represents with the highest percentage of overall voter turnout of any region in the country.

Why don’t the tens of millions of people in the U.S. who are unregistered register to vote? The 2012 Census Bureau report reveals most (46 percent) say: “I’m not interested in the election or involved in politics.” In Michigan, according to the Secretary of State, 98 percent of the voting age population is already registered, an all-time high, and proof positive that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, better known as the Motor-Voter act is doing its job. The NVRA was passed to make it easier to register to vote and update voter registration records. If you need more evidence that NVRA was a great piece of legislation, the Census Bureau’s July 2012 report shows in 2008 21 percent of people registered to vote when obtaining or renewing a driver’s license. Another 21 percent registered at a local government office, such as a city’s clerk’s office. Just 6.1 percent of people reported signing up at a registration booth, like the ones used during voter registration drives.

Do we need to keep Republican Pete Hoekstra out of the U.S. Senate? Absolutely, in my opinion. Do we need to register the 250,000 unregistered voters in Michigan? Yes, Ma’am. Is it important to get at least 70 percent of Michigan’s currently registered voters to the polls this November? High voter turnout in November is cri-ti-cal. I’m not arguing against voter registration drives. There are 146 million registered voters, total, in the U.S., and 30 million unregistered voters—22 million of whom are eligible to vote. These people need to register. I do wonder why Michigan Rising, in a state with 98 percent voter registration, and one of the highest voter turnouts nation-wide, is asking for money. The August 16th email I read is signed with organizers’ first names only. When I went to the group’s web site to try and contact them, the contact form was broken. I could track them down on Facebook and Twitter, of course. However, for the second time the Super PAC missed the deadline to file financial disclosure forms. The first missed deadline cost the group $750 in fines, paid with donations from people who, I imagine never thought their $10 gifts would be paying off a hefty penalty. The most current financial disclosure forms were due July 25th and Michigan Rising missed that deadline, as well. A Super PAC that can’t account for donations in a timely and accurate manner is a Super PAC that shouldn’t be sending out emails for money to do anything.

I think the Census Bureau data gathered from Michigan and U.S. voters present a strategic opportunity: Stop focusing on voter registration drives such as the one Michigan Rising wants the public to fund. Let the Motor-Voter law and government registration offices do their magic. Instead, work to get Michigan voters who are already registered engaged in local, state and national politics and elections. The Michigan Democratic Party should partner with county Democratic organizations to develop voter education and engagement strategies that are aimed at boosting the state’s voter turnout to 75 percent in November. That would put Michigan at the top of the list of state’s with high voter turn-out, and keep the state solidly Democratic and for Obama in 2012.

by P.D. Lesko

It’s hot, and Representative John D. Dingell, Jr. is cranky. In a July 2012 interview in the Dearborn Patch, Dingell, who’s running for re-election to the seat in Michigan’s newly drawn 12th Congressional District, set off a firestorm when he was quoted as saying: “I never thought ignorance or inexperience was a qualification for running for office.” Dingell said this in an interview with Dearborn Patch, speaking about his challengers who tout their lack of political experience and entanglements with PACs and special interests as political pluses. Dingell’s slip-up is newsworthy, because the Congressman has, for the past year, been urging civility in American political discourse. He even went so far as to make a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives urging listeners to “reclaim civility” in political discourse. You can watch the speech below:

On September 15, 2011, Mr. Dingell wrote a lengthy editorial published in the Detroit Free Press in which writes, “This partisan viciousness needs to stop.” He was, of course, chiding his colleagues in the U.S. Congress, but the mainstream media latched on to Mr. Dingell’s message as a clarion call of all politicians to, well, quit the nasty political hair-pulling and get to business. It comes as rather a surprise for the incumbent to stoop to name-calling. The Congressman’s opponents, in response to his swipes at their “ignorance” and “inexperience” refused to rise to the bait.

“I don’t care about politics,” Dearborn Republican and 12th District candidate Karen Jacobsen (right) told Dearborn Patch. “I care about fixing the big problems in this country before we go over the edge.”

Meanwhile in Ann Arbor economist and Democrat Daniel Marcin chose a campaign website name to reflect what he hopes will be the end of Dingell’s career representing Michigan in the U.S. Congress: www.No30thTerm.com. “He’s been in office since before my parents were born,” Marcin said. “I think my ideas are more aligned with the people in the 12th District than his. I happen to think he has been there too long.”

Dearborn Patch readers, for the most part, agreed. They also expressed disappointment with Mr. Dingell’s personal attacks on his fellow Dems. The second comment set the tone for the subsequent discussion among the readers:

It’s time for Dingell to step aside along with his ever present wife and let someone else step in. No one should be the longest serving member of congress and if you see this guy he can barely keep his mouth closed on his own. I frankly don’t care if it is a democrat, plutocrat or a republican, just get some new blood in there. Any incumbent with the same job for so many decades is totally out of touch and completely indebted to special interests. Dingell go enjoy the social security you worked so hard to protect. Move on buddy.

Mr. Dingell, in response to the writer’s questions about campaign trail attacks against him said, “People wave and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Dingell, for what you do. We’ve been helping and serving people for over 50 years here and I find the people of this district rather like it.””

The majority of the dozens of comments in response to the piece, however, were not from constituents waving and sending along their sincere best wishes. They were, for the most part, chastising the incumbent.

What an arrogant condescending statement by a guy who had zero experience back in the paleolithic age when he joined Congress. Maybe the ladies who want his job dont have as much experience milking the public trough like Dingell but give em a chance. heck does the democratic party have such a shallow talent pool that they have to prop up this hand puppet? What happens if he gets incapacitated while on duty? He’ll be close to ninety by the end of this term. I like my granny but I’d rather take her to the grocery store than have her run the country.

Even the Congressman’s wife, Debbie Dingell, took some lumps. However, peppered among the calls for the 86-year-old Dingell to retire were the occasional nuggets of stout support.

Thank you, Congressman Dingell! You are a fabulous, caring, highly accomplished human being, and we are so lucky to have you in Dearborn. Thank you for many years of experience and untarnished excellence!

I have waited 10 years to be back in Congressman Dingell’s district. For 10 years Downriver has been split to diminish our influence. I am so glad to have such a find man representing my community again.

No one in political life today has done more for working people, middle class citizens and our communities than John Dingell. We are lucky to have him as our Congressman – as long as the dear Lord sees fit.

It appears from the comments that John Dingell’s insults about his Democratic opponents hit two nerves: first, readers perceived his comments as arrogant. Second, many comments took exception to Dingell’s crack about “inexperience” making a candidate “unfit to hold office.”

Unfortunately when we are a mature individual we fail to realize that youth needs to have the opportunities that we had when we were young. How else will our youth be able to obtain the same experience. Both young and old are valuable. Maybe it is time to collect his pension, he is one of the few that has earned it. Politians only need to serve 2 terms before receiving full benefits. Full pension and full health insurance. I don’t remember voting on this issue but I guess my mind isn’t ras it tuse to be. There was a time that people were proud to serve their country and didn’t require a position until death, and recognized the value of training young people to help with new hope and new ideas. Those of us in the middle class have the opportunity to support the poor and the wealthy how lucky can one be. It truly is a time for change so that we can build the wonderful country we live in. We need job opportunities for all that are fit to work. If we are working until we are in our late 80′s we are taking away a job from someone. We need to think with open minds and give opportunities to those needing them. Politians need to put their hands in their pockets, and listen to the American people and their realities not the irrational realities of the politiians. We need to see what you are saying and not listen to what we hear. Quite often they do not match.

Last time I checked anytime you are new you have inexperience. It’s a shame this is the words he chose to use. But being in politics longer than my dad has been alive I wouldn’t of expected anything less. Just makes me want to vote of his competition by the ignorance of his comments.

Then again, Democrat Daniel Marcin shot himself in both feet and stuck them in his mouth when he was quoted in an interview as saying the incumbent “pretty much sucks,” at his job. While reader comments in response to Marcin’s May 7, 2012  faux pas were critical of his choice of words, there were also calls in response to that piece for John Dingell to step aside. One reader pointed out the obvious. Again.

A little history, gentle readers: John Dingell will be 86 on July 6. He has been in Congress since he was 29 years old. In fact even longer, if you include that he served as a page in the House of Representatives from 1938-43 (age 12-17). He won a special election in 1955, to complete his father’s term after the senior Dingell died in office. He has run and been reelected 26 times. If he serves until June 8, 2013, he will become the longest-serving member of Congress in American history. I think perhaps it’s time he retired, even he doesn’t think so. We need fresh faces and new ideas.

I don’t think the language should be the focus of voters’ attention. Politeness and political correctness do not get the job done, good ideas and passion do. John Dingell needs to retire, not die in office.

On her campaign website, Dearborn Republican Karen Jacobsen responded to Dingell’s attack. She writes in a press release: “According to John Dingell, my experience as a business owner, Accountant and lifelong Michigan resident make me ignorant, inexperienced and unfit for Office. As a private citizen and voter, I am unhappy with Mr. Dingell’s job performance in Washington, D.C., but I would never call him names. My campaign is about how we move forward, how we solve the big problems facing our country, and how we get this economy growing to make Michigan and the United States the best place for jobs and opportunity.”

Evidently, one of the candidates in the race for Michigan’s 12th Congressional seat has been listening to John Dingell’s calls for more civility in national politics and in Congress.

by Rob Smith

“I don’t get no respect,” was the signature line of comedian Rodney Dangerfield. The 2012 Michigan Sierra Club political endorsements are out, and in Michigan the Dean of the House, Representative John Dingell, just don’t get no respect from the Sierra Club. Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Dingell doesn’t deserve an endorsement for his environmentalism. He has shielded Detroit’s automakers for the past several decades to the detriment of the environment. In April, I picked up the newspaper and was puzzled to see an Ode to John Dingell by the Executive Director of the Michigan Environmental Council, Mr. Christopher Kolb, a former Ann Arbor City Council and state representative. As A2Politico noted recently, since the 90s Mother Jones magazine’s political and environmental coverage of Mr. Dingell’s work in Congress has read like a rap sheet. For example, in 2010 Mr. Dingell said: “I continue to make the case that the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA, erroneously found that greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.”

His idea is that Congress should regulate greehouse gas emission standards.

These are people who take Big Money from Big Oil, especially Mr. Dingell, who is a favorite of BP’s political PAC. I can hear Congress now: “Asthma? Ozone? You folks just plain crazy. They ain’t no warming. We got plenty of AC here in DC. The ozone is just fine where it is. What greenhouse gases?!? Pass the Super PAC money and pork chops, please.”

The Michigan Sierra Club 2012 endorsements are right on in voting Mr. Dingell right off the island. He’s been a horsefly in the country’s environmental ointment for decades. Mr. Dingell is also a fly in the political ointment in Ann Arbor. He has been “endorsing” candidates for local office. In 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now in 2012 Mr. Dingell has lent his name to local candidates looking to impress the voters.

There’s just one problem. Mr. Dingell has a knack for backing candidates much like himself, pols who are not Sierra Club endorsement material. In 2009, 2010, 2011 and now again in 2012 the Michigan Sierra Club refused to endorse not only Mr. Dingell, but the local candidates he endorsed, as well. It’s a singular record that no other member of Congress can touch. They can’t touch it, in part, because it is uncommon for members of the United States House of Representatives to even endorse in City Council runoff races. The Houston Chronicle made a point of noting that two Texas Congressman had endorsed a City Council candidate there in a 2012 run-off election. In 2012, fewer than 2 percent of members in the U.S. House of Representatives gave endorsements in local races.

President Obama recently endorsed Representative John Conyers, Jr., who is facing stiff opposition. Mr. Conyers, however, doesn’t endorse in City Council races in the cities in southeastern Michigan where is district is, according to a staffer who fielded my question via email. “It wouldn’t be appropriate,” wrote the staffer, “for the Congressman to involve himself in local political races.”

After Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Conyers, the Congressman issued a statement which said, in part, “I am extremely humbled by President Obama’s endorsement.”

Local Ann Arbor folks who run for office don’t seem to be issuing statements about feeling “extremely humbled” by the endorsement of the longest-sitting member of the United States Congress. The local candidates just hang out the Dingell Shingle on a campaign webpage and maybe feel humbled inside, where it counts? I can understand that Representative Dingell don’t get no respect from the Sierra Club, but Mr. Dingell don’t get no respect from the City Council candidates he endorses, either. Could it be because Mr. Dingell’s endorsement isn’t the silver bullet you would think an endorsement from a member of Congress would be?

In 2009, when Mr. Dingell endorsed former Ward 3 City Council member Leigh Greden, it didn’t help. Greden lost. In 2011, when Mr. Dingell endorsed a City Council member who ran for Mayor as a Republican, then switched to the branch of the Democratic Party where they support the GOP candidate for governor, that guy lost, as well. Now, Mr. Dingell is endorsing Ward 2 Council member Tony Derezinski and Ward 5 candidate Chuck Warpehoski. Will the endorsements make a difference to voters? Time will tell.

However, like Mr. Dingell, his Democratic horses in those local races didn’t get no respect from the Michigan Sierra Club. Mr. Derezinski running for re-election to Ann Arbor City Council, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have a record that would merit an endorsement. Mr. D. hasn’t seen a parking garage he didn’t like, and voted to use parkland for parking. He’s a Democrat with Republican leanings, to be sure. He has criticized city labor unions as greedy, and his campaign finance records show lots of Republican support, including from the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Mr. Warpehoski, I am guessing, just plain lost out on the endorsement because his opponent has more experience and more accomplishments. Maybe someday Chuck will get some support from the Michigan Sierra Club, but not this time around.

That the Sierra Club considers Mr. Dingell unworthy of endorsement should come as no surprise to anyone. That the local candidates he has endorsed consider Mr. Dingell unworthy of thanks is a cryin’ shame. That small-time locals use a Congressman’s name without public thanks is an insult to Mr. Dingell and the office he occupies. That Mr. Dingell doesn’t bother to tell voters why he’s endorsing the local candidates he does is an insult to the political process. I may not agree with Mr. Dingell’s stances on greenhouse gases, global warming, fuel emission standards and the like, but I think we can all agree that Mr. Dingell does deserve respect from the candidates he endorses. Likewise, local voters deserve Mr. Dingell’s respect by being able to rely on his professionalism in explaining clearly why he gives the endorsements he does. Is he endorsing these local candidates for a particular reason, or is the name “John D. Dingell, Jr.” just an old bone that gets tossed to local candidates?

Like the Sierra Club, Representative Dingell needs to have standards and explain them. Otherwise, don’t nobody get no respect in these local runoff elections.

by P.D. Lesko

Who doesn’t want to get a mention in Rolling Stone magazine? You, Adam Levine, Lady Gaga and Nicki effing Minaj rubbing elbows in print. What could be cooler than that? Michigan made the pages of Rolling Stone in a June 27, 2012 piece that reports on the state’s recently passed “voter fraud” legislation. A2Politico has tackled this issue more than once. In a February 2012 piece titled “Michigan GOP Undermines Voting Right While Claiming to Battle Rampant Voter Fraud,” A2P revealed that judging from the number of bills Michigan GOP members pushed through the state Senate, one could be led to believe that voter fraud in Michigan is a problem of epidemic proportions. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

From Roll Call. Used with permission.

In a 2004 federal court ruling, Judge David Lawson concluded that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Michigan:

Preventing election fraud and preserving the “purity of the ballot box” certainly is a legitimate State interest. However, Michigan enjoys an election history that is relatively fraud-free. In 1997, Michigan’s attorney general stated that “as the chief law enforcement official of the State of Michigan, I am not aware of any substantial voter fraud in Michigan’s elections. I have not received complaints regarding voter fraud. Moreover, the state’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Candice Miller, confirmed the fact that Michigan does not have a voter fraud problem when she stated: “We have no real evidence of voter fraud in Michigan. Michigan has historically had very clean elections.”

In 2010, the now defunct Michigan Messenger contacted county and state election officials and found none who could recall even a single incident of actual voter fraud in the state of Michigan. That includes elections officials in Oakland County, where Ruth Johnson was the clerk before being elected Secretary of State. The spokesperson for the office she currently holds told the Messenger, “If you’re talking about actual in-person voting at the polls as opposed to bad registration cards, I’d have to say no. I’m happy to say we’re a very clean state.”

A2Politico also tackled the issue here, in a piece that looks at how voter ID laws disenfranchise not only homeless voters, but students, seniors and low-income voters, as well.

That was February and now its almost July, and as Rolling Stone reports:

State legislatures may be taking off for the summer, but the GOP’s war on voting goes on.

This afternoon, the New Hampshire Legislature successfully overrode Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a voter ID law requiring voters to present driver’s licenses, state-issued non-driver’s identification cards, passports or military IDs before casting a ballot, though it doesn’t come fully into force until after the November election.

In Michigan, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder looks likely any day now to sign a bill requiring volunteers to attend state-approved training sessions before they can register voters. What’s wrong with that? The bill makes no provision for training sessions! Not only that, but volunteers have to have to sign an affidavit making them liable for registration offenses – offenses that aren’t specified! The bill is basically a copy a Florida law, parts of which a federal judge shot down in May, saying they had “no purpose other than to discourage” voting.

Should Snyder sign the legislation into law, Michigan voters will have to rely on federal courts to protect their voting rights. The Michigan Legislature is on a roll passing legislation that requires the state’s residents to seek protection from their own state government from U.S. federal courts. The New York Times editorialized on June 15, 2012 about the anti-abortion legislation passed in Michigan (with a helping hand from several Democrats), and had this bit of small comfort for the state’s women: “If Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, were to sign the measure, he would be taking part in a shameful assault on reproductive health care. It would then fall to the courts to stand up for Michigan’s women and their legal rights.” The editorial, titled, “Michigan’s Attack on Women’s Rights,” could have just as easily been titled, “Michigan’s Attack on Voter’s Rights.”

Rolling Stone first reported on the GOP’s attempts to roll back voting rights in August 2011. Writer Ari Berman summed up the ALEC-inspired, Koch Bro funded efforts to suppress the vote like this: “Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. ‘What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century,’ says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.”

All of the Dems in Michigan (and in Ann Arbor) who voted for Rick Snyder, donated to his campaign and otherwise helped bring Darth Snyder to power should read the next sentences very carefully, while kicking themselves in their own political ashcans: Michigan’s “voter fraud” legislation is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party. In 2011 alone, 38 states introduced legislation designed to trip up and disqualify voters.

What have ALEC and its many politico members in state legislatures around the country achieved? This round-up comes from Rolling Stone:

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

In a speech, Former President Bill Clinton had this to say about the GOP’s war on voting in Michigan and around the country: ”One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time. Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate” – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”