Tag Archives: Michigan

March 25, 2013 · 10:40 AM

Supreme Court To Hear Affirmative Action Case

Apparently the majority Justices of the Supreme Court want another shot at dismantling Affirmative Action.

The Huffington Post

The Supreme Court is broadening its examination of affirmative action by adding a case about Michigan’s effort to ban consideration of race in college admissions.

The justices already were considering a challenge to the University of Texas program that takes account of race, among many factors, to fill remaining spots in its freshman classes. The Texas case has been argued, but not yet decided.

The court on Monday said it would add the Michigan case, which focuses on the 6-year-old voter-approved prohibition on affirmative action and the appeals court ruling that overturned the ban. The new case will be argued in the fall. A decision in the Texas case is expected by late June.

The dispute over affirmative action in Michigan has its roots in the 2003 Supreme Court decision that upheld the use of race as a factor in university admissions. That case concerned the University of Michigan law school.

In response to the court’s 5-4 decision in that case, affirmative action opponents worked to put a ballot measure in front of voters to amend the state constitution to outlaw preferential treatment on the basis of race and other factors in education, as well as government hiring and contracting. In November 2006, 58 percent of Michigan voters approved the measure.

Civil rights groups sued to block the provision the day after the vote. In November, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 8-7 to invalidate the ban as it applies to college admissions. It did not address hiring or contracting.

The appeals court said the constitutional amendment is illegal because it prohibits affirmative action supporters from lobbying lawmakers, university trustees and other people who ordinarily control admissions policies. Instead, opponents of the ban would have to mount their own long, expensive campaign through the ballot box to protect affirmative action, the court said.

That burden “undermines the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change,” the court said. The 6th Circuit divided along ideological lines, with its more liberal judges in the majority.

In the Texas case, a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas is suing to overturn the school’s use of race among many factors to fill out its incoming freshman classes. The bulk of the slots go to Texans who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.

The Michigan case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 12-682.

Related articles

 

Comments Off

Filed under U.S. Supreme Court

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 31, 2013 · 3:45 AM

45,800 Ford workers to get record $8,300 profit-sharing checks

So much for the “Let Detroit go bankrupt…” meme in 2008.  Oh, and add another gold star to the Obama greatest hits list…

Detroit News

Ford Motor Co.’s record North American profit in 2012 will have a ripple effect on auto communities across the country and especially here in Southeast Michigan.

Roughly 45,800 hourly United Auto Workers members who work at Ford plants in the United States will receive record profit-sharing checks of $8,300 on average in March.

“The expected increase in profit-sharing checks for autoworkers this March is good news for Michigan’s economy,” said Robert Dye, chief economist at Comerica Bank. “It will help to buffer households from the drag of higher payroll taxes,” which increased 2 percent for all working Americans on Jan. 1.

On average, the $8,300 profit-sharing check will have an economic impact of $20,750 per worker, when factoring a multiplying ripple effect, said David Sowerby, portfolio manager for Loomis Sayles in Bloomfield Hills.

“While we encourage savings for the long term, spending it locally, especially on made-in-Michigan products, is a bigger economic multiplier,” Sowerby said. “It gives us a decent boost.”

Dianne Reichel, a group manager with GreenPath Debt Solutions in Farmington Hills, said her clients are committed to paying down their debt and will use their checks to pay it down more quickly. But people who aren’t on a debt-reduction program will be tempted to spend it immediately.

“We all like that windfall. Because they’ve been struggling so long, and now they have the money at hand to get things, they don’t necessarily think through where the best place is to put that money,” she said.

The $8,300 profit-sharing check is a result of Ford’s profits and the most recent contract between the automaker and the UAW that was signed in 2011.

That dollar figure shatters the previous record for Ford UAW workers, which was $8,000 in 1999. It also breaks the all-time UAW profit-sharing record of $8,100 that Chrysler workers received in 1999, though adjusted for inflation that total would be worth nearly $11,000 today.

Individual profit sharing payments may be higher or lower based on the employee compensated hours.

In the past three years, Ford has doled out an average of $19,500 per worker in profit-sharing checks, rivaling a similar four-year run in the late 1990s, when Ford paid out an average of $25,200 per worker, according to the UAW.

The profit-sharing checks will also mark the fourth consecutive year of profit-sharing checks for Ford workers since the automaker staved off bankruptcy. Prior to that, profit sharing was suspended for four years.

“Fewer autoworkers may mean fewer total profit sharing dollars circulating in the Michigan economy compared to a decade ago,” Dye said. “But it is still good news to see an increase in the size of checks this year.”

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under U.S. Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 16, 2012 · 6:55 PM

Michigan GOP official: Detroit voters bussed to ‘vote multiple times’

weisermich

Here is an example of how stereo-types are re-enforced.  There is the person who spreads the lie and the receptive audience who seem to believe the lies based on past demonstrations by some tea party members.

This particular “politician” should not be allowed to continue in public service…

The Raw Story

A Michigan Republican and finance chair of the Republican National Committee said at a tea party meeting — caught on video — before the presidential election that Detroit voters are bussed around and vote multiple times after being picked up from barbershops and pool halls, reported the Detroit Free Press. The comments have been called racist and classist.

On Aug. 9 in Milford, Mich., Ron Weiser said, “If Obama loses Michigan, his paths to the White House reduce substantially. It’s very hard to see a path to the White House for him again. If we lose Virginia or Ohio, it saves us the election and we will still win. That’s how important Michigan is.”

“Now,” he went on, “I’m going to tell you my own theories in Michigan because it’s one of the reasons the RNC is sending as much money as they are here and why you will see some of our friends spending money here.”

He then discussed the number of votes the GOP needs to surmount Democrats in the state and referred to the shrunk population of Detroit. He also said that there were no Republican “machines” in the state.

“There’s no machine to go to the pool halls and the barbershops and put those people on buses and then bus them from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times. And there’s no machine to get ’em to stop playing pool and drinking beer in the pool hall. And it does make a difference,” he said.

He later said in the video, “Obama has hired a lot of people to go help him get that vote out. But if you’re not from Detroit, the places where those pool halls and barbershops are, you’re not going to be going at 6:30 in November. Not without a side arm.”

He told the Detroit Free Press that the comments were not meant to be racist and apologized if anyone was offended. He also said in a statement that he was referring to “past Democrat Party political machines.”

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer told the paper that the video speaks to “the worst possible stereotypes about African-American voters that you can imagine.”

Related articles

 

Comments Off

Filed under Voter Disenfranchisement, Voting

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 12, 2012 · 11:18 AM

MSNBC Anchors Laugh As Michigan Governor Claims Union-Busting Is Good For Workers

 

I saw this on Morning Joe today. It was indeed unintentionally hilarious…

Think Progress

On Wednesday, the hosts MSNBC’s Morning Joe laughed off Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R-MI) claims that the state’s recently-enacted right-to-work law could protect and strengthen unions by encouraging them to show more value to workers, interrupting the governor in bewilderment as he explained his argument.

Snyder appeared on the show less than 12 hours after signing two separate bills allowing public and private union members to opt out of paying union dues, while benefiting from union contracts, and defended the controversial measures. He characterized the law as benefiting workers and unions become more valuable.

The answer shocked the Morning Joe crew and led MSNBC contributor Richard Wolffe to interrupt the governor in mid-answer. Even Joe Scarborough grew incredulous and the Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein sighed heavily as Snyder spoke:

SNYDER: I’ve never said that unions are bad for business. And I don’t believe this is actually anti-union. If you look at it, I believe this is pro-worker, because the way I view it is, is workers now have freedom to choose …

WOLFFE: Hang on. Hang on a second. Are you serious? Are you serious? This is not anti-unions? This actually, at its core undermines the ability for unions to organize. So you can make any argument you like, but saying it’s not …

SNYDER: Unions have to be in a position to present a good value proposition… And if they don’t provide value, people shouldn’t be forced to pay for something they don’t see any value in. So again, this should make unions more effective in terms of having to put a value proposition to workers.

SCARBOROUGH: Governor, while I made a similar argument earlier that workers shouldn’t be compelled to have to pay from their salary to a union with whom they disagree, I would not go so far as to say what you’ve just said, which is that this helps unions. I mean, it undermines unions’ ability to stay vibrant, right?

BERNSTEIN: Absolutely!

SNYDER: It really leaves it up to the union to decide and innovate as to what their value proposition is….

BERNSTEIN: Come on!

Watch it:

Indeed, economic studies of right-to-work states show that workers tend to receive lower wages and smaller benefits than those in states with stronger unions.

Related articles

2 Comments

Filed under GOP Overreach

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 10, 2012 · 12:10 AM

Michigan Governor Snyder Slammed For Sneaking Through Anti-Union Rules

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will surely feel the blow-back from his unethical actions last week…

Alan Colmes’ Liberaland

The Detroit Free Press, which had endorsed Rick Snyder for governor, went after him for pushing through a right-to-work law, calling it a “failure of leadership” and a betrayal of voters.

For two years, we supported Snyder as he took painful steps to restore Michigan’s fiscal stability and confront a crisis in which plunging tax revenues and mounting obligations to retired workers threatened to cripple the state’s cities and school districts.

We criticized the governor for signing legislation that burdened a woman’s right to choose, condoned discrimination against gays, and beggared colleges and universities to pay for business tax cuts.

But we also indulged many compromises Snyder maintained were necessary to advance his pro-growth agenda. And when ideologues on the right and left mounted campaigns designed to hamstring state government by limiting its authority to raise revenues, regulate labor relations, and fund critically needed infrastructure, we joined the governor in opposing them.

In short, we trusted Snyder’s judgment.

That trust has now been betrayed — for us, and for the hundreds of thousand of independents who voted for Snyder with the conviction that they were electing someone more independent, and more visionary, than partisan apparatchiks like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker or Florida’s Rick Scott.

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 7, 2012 · 4:01 PM

What You Need To Know About The Michigan GOP’s ‘Right-To-Work’ Assault On Workers

Apparently there were no lessons learned from the past general election by over-reaching Republican legislators.

Think Progress

On Thursday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) backtracked on his commitment to avoid so-called “right-to-work” legislation and by the end of the day, both the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan state Senate had introduced and passed separate bills aimed at the state’s union workforce.

Michigan Republicans claim the state needs the measure to stay competitive with Indiana, where lawmakers passed “right-to-work” last year. In reality, though, such laws have negative effects on workers and little effect on economic growth. Here is what you need to know about the state GOP’s campaign:

THE LEGISLATION: Both the state House and state Senate passed legislation on Thursday that prohibits private sector unions from requiring members to pay dues. The Senate followed suit and passed a different but similar measure that extends the same prohibition for public sector unions, though firefighters and police officers are exempt. The state House included a budget appropriations provision that is intended to prevent the state’s voters from being able to legally challenge the law through a ballot referendum. Due to state law, both houses are prevented from voting on legislation passed by the other for five days, so neither will be able to fully pass the legislation until Tuesday at the earliest.

THE PROCESS: Union leaders and Democrats claim that Republicans are pushing the legislation through in the lame-duck session to hide the intent of the measures from citizens, and because the legislation would face more trouble after the new House convenes in January. Michigan Republicans hold a 63-47 advantage in the state House, but Democrats narrowed the GOP majority to just eight seats in November. Six Republicans opposed the House measure; five of them won re-election in 2012 (the sixth retired). And Michigan Republicans have good reason to pursue the laws without public debate. Though the state’s voters are evenly split on whether it should become a right-to-work state, 78 percent of voters said the legislature “should focus on issues like creating jobs and improving education, and not changing state laws or rules that would impact unions or make further changes in collective bargaining.”

THE CONSEQUENCES: While Snyder and Republicans pitched “right-to-work” as a pro-worker move aimed at improving the economy, studies show such legislation can cost workers money. The Economic Policy Institute found that right-to-work laws cost all workers, union and otherwise, $1,500 a year in wages and that they make it harder for workers to obtain pensions and health coverage. “If benefits coverage in non-right-to-work states were lowered to the levels of states with these laws, 2 million fewer workers would receive health insurance and 3.8 million fewer workers would receive pensions nationwide,” David Madland and Karla Walter from the Center for American Progress wrote earlier this year. The decreases in union membership that result from right-to-work laws have a significant impact on the middle class and research “shows that there is no relationship between right-to-work laws and state unemployment rates, state per capita income, or state job growth,” EPI wrote in a recent report about Michigan. “Right-to-work” laws also decrease worker safety and can hurt small businesses.

Union leaders are, of course, aghast at Snyder and the GOP’s right-to-work push. “In a state that gave birth to the modern U.S. labor movement, it is unconscionable that Michigan legislators would seek to drive down living standards for Michigan workers and families with a law that will do nothing to improve either the state’s economic climate or the quality of life for Michigan residents,” RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United, said in a statement.

Related articles

4 Comments

Filed under GOP Overreach

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

October 9, 2012 · 12:23 PM

Paul Ryan ends interview after being pressed on guns and taxes

Paul Ryan screenshot


Paul Ryan ends interview after being pressed on guns and taxes (via Raw Story )

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Monday ended an interview with ABC12 in Michigan after being questioned about how he would prevent gun violence in the United States. During the interview, Ryan denied the U.S. had a “gun problem.” He said the country only had a “crime problem…

More…

Related articles

5 Comments

Filed under Paul Ryan

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

September 7, 2012 · 1:23 PM

People are talking about this speech…

Some are saying this was  Granholm’s “Howard Dean moment“, but I think it was a factual and smart speech aiming for crowd response and she accomplished just that…

Wikipedia

Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-born American politician, educator, author and political commentator who served as Attorney General and 47th Governor of the U.S. state of Michigan.

A member of the Democratic Party, Granholm became Michigan’s first female governor on January 1, 2003, when she succeeded Governor John Engler. Granholm was re-elected on November 7, 2006, and was sworn in for her second and, due to term limits, final term on January 1, 2007.

She has been mentioned as a potential Supreme Court justice for President Barack Obama.[1] She was a member of the transition team for the presidency of President Obama before he assumed office on January 20, 2009.[2] After leaving office, Granholm took a position at the University of California at Berkeley and, with her husband Daniel Mulhern, coauthored A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Future, released in September 2011.[3]

Since leaving office, Granholm became host of The War Room with Jennifer Granholm on Current TV.

Related articles

 

Comments Off

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 24, 2012 · 1:30 PM

Mitt Romney Makes Birth Certificate Joke

From the beginning of his campaign, Mitt Romney has often portrayed President Obama as being some “other”.  Using terms like: “He doesn’t share American values”, “not like Americans” “Foreign vision of the country”, etc.  doesn’t convince me that he didn’t mean to say what he did…as a swipe against the president.

So to say that Romney was “just making an observation”  and that he believes the president was born in the United States, is pure rhetoric.

Having the most influential birther in this country as a surrogate and donor (Donald Trump) doesn’t help either

The Huffington Post

Mitt Romney made a joke about his birth certificate at a rally in Commerce, Mich. on Friday.

Speaking about his Michigan roots, he said, “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

The joke was received with hearty applause by the audience. Still, it was an awkward moment for the candidate to play on the birther conspiracies that have plagued Barack Obama since he ran for president in 2008, even after the president released his “long-form” birth certificate in 2011.

The Obama campaign quickly responded, with spokesman Ben LaBolt saying that Romney was embracing the most extreme elements in the conservative movement.

“Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them,” he said. “It’s one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, Sheriff Arpaio, and Kris Kobach. But Governor Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America.”

Romney adviser Kevin Madden played down the joke, saying Romney was “only referencing that Michigan, where he is campaigning today, is the state where he himself was born and raised.”

Mitt Romney’s own birth certificate was released by Reuters on the same day when the candidate appeared with Donald Trump, who loudly amplified doubts about the president’s birthplace.

Romney’s son Matt joked earlier this year about Obama’s birth certificate, a quip for which he later apologized. Referring to his father’s tax returns, he said, “I heard that someone suggested that as soon as President Obama releases his grades, and birth certificate, and a sort of a long list of things, then maybe he will.”

Romney has said that he believes that Obama was born in the United States. “I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the president was born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office,” he told Larry Kudlow in April 2011. “The man needs to be taken out of office but his citizenship isn’t the reason why.”

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under Mitt Romney

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 14, 2012 · 5:16 PM

As Punishment For Opposing Anti-Abortion Bill, Male Michigan House Leader Bans Two Female Reps From Speaking

State Rep. Barb Byrum (D)

It’s safe to say that Republicans are out of control on the state and federal level.  Seriously, how misogynistic is it to ban two Democratic women for voting against a bill?  Where is their guarantee of “first amendment rights” as ensured by The Constitution?

Think Progress

A male Republican House leader in Michigan silenced two female Democratic state legislators on Thursday after the pair tried to advance a measure that would have reduced access to vasectomies.

While discussing a bill that would erode the availability of abortion, Reps. Barb Byrum and Lisa Brown introduced an amendment to apply the same regulations to vasectomies that GOP lawmakers wanted to add to abortion services. The debate grew heated, as Republicans sought to gravel down the women. Byrum was not permitted to speak in favor of the measure and Brown was repeatedly interrupted. “I’m flattered that you want to get in my vagina, but no means no,” she said. The next day both were silenced. Watch their comments:

Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas (R) was “uncomfortable with me saying vasectomy,” Byrum explained, noting that no one told her why she had been banned or how long it would last. “I can only assume it’s because I stood up for my district and women in Michigan yesterday,” she added.

Ari Adler, spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger (R), said the women “will not be recognized to speak on the House floor today after being gaveled down for their comments and actions yesterday that failed to maintain the decorum of the House of Representatives.”

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Michigan

Tagged as , , , , , , ,