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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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BREAKING: Mich Elections Board cancels next week’s meeting preventing decision on PA4 & collective bargaining referendums, GOP member rumored to have resigned
By Eclectablog on June 22, 2012in Conservatives, Emergency Manager Law
Desperation breeds desperate behavior
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has cancelled a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday, June 26th. I confirmed this with a phone call to the Elections Bureau this afternoon. Additionally, Republican Board member Jeff Timmer is rumored to have resigned and it is believed that the other Republican, Norm Shinkle, will resign as well, leaving the Board without a quorum. I have been unable to confirm Timmer’s resignation but I have heard about it from multiple sources.
Without a quorum, the Board will be unable to certify ANY of the referendums headed for the ballot in November. They will need to wait until Governor Rick Snyder appoints replacements, a process that could take … oh, I don’t know … some time. Wouldn’t want to rush into it or anything, make a hasty decision and such.
The reasoning behind these dramatic moves is clear: to prevent the validation of the petitions to repeal Public Act 4 — the Emergency Manager Law — and the “Protect Our Jobs” petitions to place collective bargaining protections in the state constitution. Any sort of delay like this increases the likelihood that the referendums will not be certified by the August 27th deadline for placing them on the ballot and reduces the amount of time proponents for the referendums have to get out the vote.
Taking steps this drastic betray the absolute terror conservatives have in Michigan at the moment. They are so desperate to hold onto their power and the gains they have made that they will literally interfere with and subvert the democratic processes to get their way.
This. Is. Shameful.
This story came to me by way of Amy Kerr Hardin of Democracy Tree. Please visit her site and follow her on Facebook. She’s one of Michigan’s finest researchers and bloggers.
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:24 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:03 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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THIS IS WHY THE BOARD OF CANVASSERS CANCELLED THEIR MEETING. SNYDER AND HIS ANTI-DEMOCRACY CRONIES USE NEW STALL TACTICS!
Emergency Manager law opponents file for immediate action by Board of State Canvassers to put repeal on ballot
By Eclectablog on June 20, 2012in Emergency Manager Law
Your stall tactics are becoming obvious, Republicans
The Stand Up for Democracy coalition along with Rainbow/Push Detroit filed an emergency appeal today demanding that the Board of State Canvassers rule immediately to put the repeal of Public Act 4 – Michigan’s anti-democratic Emergency Manager law — on the November ballot.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the measure must be allowed on the ballot because the nearly quarter million petition signatures were on petitions that were “substantially compliant” with the petition laws. (In fact, they were 100% compliant.)
Stand Up for Democracy said in a statement:
The Board of Canvassers meets Tuesday and is not scheduled to certify the petition as ordered by the court. This is the latest stall tactic by opponents of democracy. For months, right-wing elements in state government have been hard at work making sure the petition to repeal the emergency manager dictator law would never make it to the ballot. Although those efforts suffered a major setback in the courts last week, right wing elements in state government continue to find ways to stall the courts’ order.
Rainbow Push Detroit’s D. Alexander Bullock said, “In Michigan we face the twin evils of voter suspension and voter suppression. It is time for the Court of Appeals to uphold the law and not participate in partisan politics.”
The emergency appeal was filed this afternoon.
From the Detroit Free Press:
The citizen group Stand Up for Democracy said in its motion for immediate effect that the Court’s inaction — basically not ordering the Board in its opinion to immediately place the question on the ballot — before Election Day would be a blow to democracy.
“We won in the Court of Appeals last week,” said attorney Melvin “Butch” Hollowell. “They indicated in their ruling that the 226,000 petitions that were circulated throughout the state of Michigan to overturn this emergency financial manager law must be placed on the Nov. 6 ballot.” [...]
“This is an occasion for all Michiganders, no matter where you live, no matter what your party affiliation is, what your ideological beliefs may be, this is a question for democracy,” [Detroit NAACP president Rev. Wendell] Anthony said. “It’s not a Democratic issue. It’s not a Republican issue. It’s not a Detroit issue. It’s not a Traverse City issue. It’s an American issue. This is a question of democracy.” [...]
“If our motion is not granted the Court of Appeals decision will be meaningless because we will miss the deadline of August 27 that we need to meet in order for this initiative to get on the ballot, said Stand Up for Democracy attorney Julie Hurwitz.”So it would be a completely meaningless opinion from the Court of Appeals unless they grant this motion.”
I have said all along that this entire charade about the font size is nothing more than a stall tactic to prevent the referendum from getting on the ballot. We will find out next Tuesday if this is exactly what is happening.
Stay tuned. |
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Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:19 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Right-leaning Livingston County Press op-ed hammers judges for Emergency Manager law repeal petition decision
By Eclectablog on June 22, 2012in Conservatives, Emergency Manager Law
When you’ve lost the conservative press, you’ve lost
The Livingston County Press & Argus editorial page is not known for being part of the so-called “Liberal Media”. Quite the opposite, in fact. So, their recent Op-Ed “Politics trumps law for GOP judges” is significant.
Very significant.
The op-ed takes the Republican-controlled courts in Michigan to task for standing in the way of the democratic process by rejecting the petitions containing nearly a quarter million signatures of Michiganders that want Public Act 4 — the anti-democratic Emergency Manager law — repealed.
Often, one hears Republicans and conservatives who bellyache about how so-called activist judges misuse their power to issue decisions that favor their political interests rather than merely following the law.
The conservatives say their judges would never do such a thing. They interpret the law, rather than make it to fit their political goals.
Don’t believe it. They are all too willing to twist the judicial system into a shape that fits their partisan vision.
Take, for instance, the gyrations that some justices are going through to prevent a statewide vote on the state’s emergency manager law. Despite the fact that more than 200,000 Michigan residents signed petitions seeking a referendum on the controversial law, the Republican cabal is doing everything it can to prevent the vote because some of the type on the petition was too small.
How small? A minute fraction of an inch — 1/36th of an inch, to be exact.
It’s beyond ridiculous.
Beyond ridiculous, indeed.
The op-ed explains in great detail the lengths to which conservatives, with cooperation from their Republican judges, have thwarted democracy. The important thing to note is the editors of the Livingston County Press & Argus don’t support the repeal. They are in favor of keeping Public Act 4 on the books. But they realize that we have laws about citizens’ referendums for a reason and these laws must not be trod upon just to advance a political agenda.
The emergency manager law appears to be the only way that cities from Benton Harbor to Detroit will get their financial act together. The motives of the petitioners are suspect. If their proposal reaches the ballot, voters should defeat it.
Nonetheless, the petitioners met the obligations of the law. The issue should be on the ballot. That’s the way it works when you have an independent judiciary that follows the law, not politics. That’s not how it is working with Michigan’s Republican judges, the ones who supposedly follow the letter of the law.
It’s refreshing that they are showing such credibility and consistency and I commend them for it. |
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Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:22 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Anti-Democracy group asks Republican Sec. of State to throw out Protect Our Jobs citizens’ referendum
By Eclectablog on June 22, 2012in Conservatives, GOPocrisy, Labor
When you don’t have the votes, you cheat
An anti-democracy group ironically called Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution is asking Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson to throw away the petitions containing nearly 700,000 signatures to keep the Protect Our Jobs referendum off the November ballot, saying:
“We believe that you have a clear legal duty to reject the filed petition and to refuse to further process it, canvass the signatures or to refer the petition to the Board of State Canvassers for certification to the ballot.”
The Protect Our Jobs referendum would enshrine collective bargaining rights for Michiganders in the state constitution, preventing anti-union, anti-labor legislation from destroying the hallmark of the labor movement. Because conservatives fear they don’t have the votes to defeat the initiative, they are doing an end-run around the democratic process and going straight to their Republican friends in high places.
A coalition of business groups sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, asking she intervene to keep a union-backed proposal off the November ballot.
The coalition is opposed to the “Protect Our Jobs” initiative for a constitutional amendment to guarantee collective bargaining rights. If approved by voters in November, the amendment would keep Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state and could reverse dozens of laws that curb union rights.
The business coalition told Johnson the union-backed constitutional amendment would result in a rewrite of the state constitution because it’s in conflict with several sections of the document. They said it would also result in the repeal of roughly 80 state laws.
Members of the coalition, known as Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, include the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, Business Leaders for Michigan, the West Michigan Policy Forum and other groups, spokesman Nick De Leeuw said.
Just like the fake controversy created around the Emergency Manager law repeal petitions, this is an effort by conservatives to bypass the democratic process and use their absolute control over our state government to maintain their power and prevent any opposition to achieving their goals.
It’s time for people in Michigan across the entire political spectrum to rise up and demand an end to this abrogation of our laws and constitution.
Tea party members, are you listening?
[Images by Chris Savage | Eclectablog] |
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Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:28 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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WARNING: This is a Republican Takeover
By LOLGOP on June 11, 2012in Emergency Manager Law, Emergency Managers, GOPocrisy, Michigan Republicans, Obama Administration, Tea Party
What’s the Mayan word for “Tea Partier”?
Dear people who live outside of Michigan,
Michigan is a “blue state.” Democrats have won the state in every presidential election since 1992. Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama. Yet in blue Michigan, we know exactly what happens when Republicans take control of all three branches of state government: corporations win and people lose.
In less than two years we’ve seen a time bomb of tax increases for the poor, attacks on teachers and the introduction of a package of bills that will give us the most restrictive abortion rights laws in the country once the Republicans pass them in the next few weeks. But the Emergency Manager Law—and the Kafkaesque lengths the GOP has gone to keep it from being repealed—is probably the most egregious example of government overreach in the nation.
What’s going on Michigan—as Rachel Maddow, Eclectablog’s own Chris Savage and others have said—isn’t just an isolated example of rogue Republicans with an obscure agenda. It’s a preview of the kind of steamrolling corporate agenda you can expect if the GOP takes the White House and Congress in fall—thus the Supreme Court for the next generation.
The most dangerous conspiracies are usually the ones that happen in public. Dick Cheney saying we can’t wait for a smoking gun that’s a mushroom cloud. The chief fundraiser of the GOP appearing daily on national TV as a news “analyst.” Michigan Republicans ignoring the will of hundreds of thousands of citizens to keep a law that should send shudders down the spine of any so-called Tea Partier.
The worst conspiracies also often happen in slow motion.
In December 2009 when I arrived in Michigan, I thought I was going to see a Great Depression. Do not get me twisted. We’re in a depression now for people who don’t have a college education. But anyone who lives in Michigan knows the kind of grapes we were headed for.
In California, my wife was a qualified professional who had to be torn from her co-workers to make the move back to her home state. In Michigan, she was one name in an endless horizon of applicants with U of M degrees who couldn’t even get a call back. Temp agencies were flooded. Even some volunteer agencies were flooded with people eager to fill holes in their resumes.
Meanwhile, the auto industry was restructuring and healing, heading into a recovery so vast and unexpected that it has jolted the economies of Michigan and much of the Midwest back to life. This renewal was entirely the result of actions taken by the Governor Granholm, the President and his administration, despite the diabolical objections of pretty much just Mitt Romney.
But, before that recovery could rev up, voters went to the polls.
Economic insecurity—like all insecurity—drives people toward conservative/simple answers. This is was an ironic effect of a crisis created by conservative policies—something that was especially hard to explain when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. So the small percentage of Michiganders who voted elected Republicans. Lots of them. A Republican governor along with Republican majorities in both state houses. And they came into power as the recovery heated up here sending our unemployment rate far below California’s.
The Michigan GOP’s tax increases for the elderly, cuts for the poor and massive tax breaks for corporations were boilerplate state Republican politics. And the Michigan GOP didn’t make the mistake of going immediately after union rights on a state-wide level the way Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. Instead, they went after the most impoverished communities, using the Emergency Manager Law, which gives them the power to tear apart union contracts, sell public assets and ignore elections.
The evidence shows that this law does not work and, worst of all, it is not designed to work.
At the heart of this is a desire to privatize public services, something Chris calls an “egregious transfer/siphoning of public resources, in this case tax revenues, to the private sector.” (I just want to know: Where is an example of a service being privatized in America that resulted in a better deal for taxpayers?)
Emergency Manager Laws are a right-wing think tank wet dream designed to wrest power from poor communities that refuse to vote Republican. The success in wresting public assets and good jobs from the middle class in Michigan has led to a similar law in Indiana. There’s no doubt if it successfully breaks unions and removes voters from the process of allocating funds there, it will spread everywhere.
So what do you do when you have a law that the public opposes? In Michigan, you circulate a petition to get enough signatures to get the question on the ballot alongside the names of many of the elected officials who voted for it.
Opponents of the Emergency Manger Law did just that.
Republicans claim to hate bureaucracy—but Michigan’s GOP then used the bureaucratic power they have from controlling nearly all of the state government to throw the petitions out because of FONT SIZE, a claim that FONT experts reject.
So opponents of the Emergency Manager Law sued. And what does a GOP-dominated court do?
The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled today that the petitions for the repeal of Michigan’s Emergency Manager law did NOT comply with the law. This is despite the sworn printer’s affidavit and expert analysis proving otherwise.
Chris suggests this all about delaying. Either this kangaroo jostling will go on so long that the question will not be on the ballot in November, or proponents of overturning the law won’t have time to mount a proper campaign. It’s just another way the GOP is using their power to prevent voting from getting in the way of their agenda.
What’s at stake in Michigan is the right of people to elect their own officials and make their own decisions to govern themselves. The GOP increasingly recognizes that their own obstacle to implementing their agenda are elections. If they can use laws to keep people from voting and courts from keeping issues they don’t like on the ballot, what’s lost is not local control, but democracy itself.
Follow Eclectablog |
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Sat Jun 23, 2012 7:33 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Rachel Maddow on Michigan going crazy:
MADDOW: On February 29th, in Michigan, a group of voters drove to the
capital with more than enough signatures for a referendum on Republican
Governor Rick Snyder`s souped up emergency manager law.
It`s that Michigan law that lets the state install a single overseer
to replace all local elected officials. So your vote for mayor, your vote
for city council, your vote for school board, null and void. The governor
will put someone in charge to overrule whoever you voted. No more local
democracy.
In February, they delivered the signatures to the board of state
canvassers, to place a repeal of that emergency manager law on the November
ballot. Now, the deadline for challenging those petitions to put the thing
on the ballot was April 9th at 5:00 p.m. And, hey, on deadline day, April
9th at 4:08 p.m., in comes a challenge.
The challenge says: stop there. We don`t care how many voters signed
these petitions. The font size on one line of the petition is too small.
And because this is Michigan, where democracy has gone a little
cockeyed, the group challenging the font size on the petitions turns out to
live inside the office of a member of the board of state canvassers -- the
board that is deciding on the challenge, the board that decides whether the
referendum lives or dies.
That member, one of two Republicans on that board of canvassers, was
on both sides of the play, right? He`s both the pitcher throwing the pitch
or the umpire calling it a ball or a strike.
Now, again, because this is Michigan, and democracy there is
apparently a wobbling drunk, one of the Democrats on the board of
canvassers also has a conflict of interest. She is associated with the
people who brought the petitions in, in the first place.
Now, the powerful people in Michigan, a lot of the Michigan press says
they`re OK with this. They`re good with this kind of government by
mutually assured conflict of interest. Maybe so. I`m not so sure whether
the citizens of Michigan are all that good with it.
On April 26th, the board of canvassers deadlocked on party lines,
throwing the petitions out, saying there will be no referendum on the
ballot for that controversial Michigan law. Since then, this thing has
been in and out of the courts and in and out of the courts with the last
ruling being that the board of canvassers actually has to put it on the
ballot, but not until there`s a chance for one more appeal.
So, in the midst of all of this, with the clock ticking, with multiple
cities and school districts under emergency manager authoritarian rule,
which could be stopped if this thing`s going to be on the ballot, in the
midst of all of this, there is confusion in Michigan over what that board
of canvassers is doing now, when they`re going to meet, what they`re
planning, how they`re going to deal with these court rulings.
And in the midst of all this confusion, on this really important issue
in Michigan, very quietly, last week, the Republican board member who had
that giant, obvious, conflict of interest, resigned. Very quietly.
It was first reported on "Ecletablog" out of Michigan. We wanted to
check it out. So one of our producers wrote to the guy who was reported to
have resigned, Republican board member Jeff Timmer. We asked Mr. Timmer if
it was true he had resigned and when he had resigned. His answer to us,
quoting the whole thing, "True, June 18th."
When we followed up by asking why he quit, Mr. Timmer wrote this,
quote, "I just want to be liked by the tens of people watching your show." |
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Tue Jun 26, 2012 6:49 pm |
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