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Stories tagged with “Michigan”

NEWS FLASH

Detroit To Shut Off Half Its Streetlights Due To Budget Woes | Due to the effects of the Great Recession, several American cities have turned off their streetlights in a last-ditch effort to save money. Highland Park, Michigan, even ripped up its lampposts to save a few dollars. Now Detroit is turning off half of its streetlights as a budget cutting measure. “You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. Even as they cut hundreds of millions of dollars in support to cities and schools in the 2012 budget, Michigan lawmakers saw fit to dole out $1.7 billion in corporate tax breaks.

NEWS FLASH

Michigan Prisoner’s Sexual Orientation Discrimination Claim Advances | Ricky Davis, a gay prisoner at the Florence Crane Correctional Facility in Coldwater, Michigan, has received a favorable decision allowing his suit of anti-gay discrimination to proceed. The ACLU is defending Davis, who claims he was improperly removed from his employment in the prison public works program because of his sexual orientation. He also claims that his crew supervisors “made a spectacle” of him after he had a diabetic episode while on duty, avoiding interacting with him because he is gay. At this point, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has merely saved Davis’ suit from being dismissed, but the decision guarantees that his case — and others like it — will get a fair hearing.

Election

Michigan Senate Candidate Calls Lilly Ledbetter Pay Equity Law A ‘Nuisance’: ‘It Shouldn’t Be The Law’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 13, 2012 at 2:58 pm

At a campaign event yesterday, former GOP congressman and current Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra said the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 should not be law because it interferes with job creation. The law has been in the news lately after presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney hedged on his support for it earlier this week. But Hoekstra, who is running against Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), was clear.

When an attendee asked Hoekstra if he would “work to repeal” the law — which empowers women to hold employers accountable for pay discrimination — Hoekstra replied, “It shouldn’t be the law“:

“Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that’s really the thing that’s hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create — that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn’t be the law,” replied Hoekstra.

Listen to it:

Hoekstra joined most of the rest of his party in voting against the Ledbetter act in 2009, and also in 2007 when Republicans killed it. (HT: Amanda Terkel)

Health

Republican Congressman Scolded And Mocked By Senior Citizens For Embrace Of Ryan Budget

By Adam Peck on Apr 10, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Representative Dan Benishek (R-MI)

Rep. Dan Benishek’s (R-MI) embrace of the Republican Party’s platform ran into stiff opposition at a town hall meeting in Saulte Sainte Marie, Michigan when at least a dozen constituents, many of them senior citizens, pushed back against Benishek’s claims on Medicare, Social Security, oil subsides and health care reform.

Benishek couldn’t even get through his opening remarks before attendees began criticizing his support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed budget that would increase the cost of health care for seniors by providing “premium support” vouchers to eligible senior citizens.

“If you have a better idea as how to keep Medicare sustainable over the long term, I’d be happy to hear it,” offered Benishek.

He may have regretted those words after the event, because for half an hour, Benishek fielded several suggestions on how to increase funding for Medicare, ranging from ending oil subsidies to increasing taxes on the wealthiest two percent, suggestions that Benishek summarily dismissed.

Benishek also displayed a shocking lack of self-awareness about his level of knowledge of some key facts. “There are no government subsidies for oil,” he told one woman who suggested ending the very real subsidies given to oil corporations to help defray the cost of Medicare. Watch a portion of the town hall:

At one point, the discussion turned to health care reform. Benishek, who served as a medical doctor before he was elected to Congress in 2010, was thrust onto the national stage after his predecessor Bart Stupak cast the deciding vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. He told the audience that the United States has the best health care system in the world, before he was literally laughed at by several attendees.

“We have the highest life spans in the world,” argued Benishek. Several women in the audience quickly pointed out that in fact, many countries with universal health care place higher than the United States in terms of life expectancy, including Canada, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. The United States ranks 50th, just behind South Korea and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” said Benishek. “How can you not know that, you’re a medical doctor?” one woman replied.

The confrontational town hall meeting almost didn’t even happen, after a member of the public, armed with a camera, refused to stop recording. A representative from the Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the event, threatened to shut down the entire proceedings.

NEWS FLASH

Michigan Civil Service Commission Upholds Firing Of Assistant AG Over Anti-Gay Bullying | A state hearing officer upheld the 2010 firing of Andrew Shirvell, an assistant attorney general in Michigan, who harassed the student government president at the University of Michigan because he is gay. William Hutchens of the Michigan Civil Service Commission said Shirvell was justly dismissed after engaging in “hate speech” and “physical and mental harassment.” The student government president — Chris Armstrong — has since launched a scholarship fund for victims of anti-gay bullying.

Related Posts

NEWS FLASH

Michigan Native American Tribe Set To Advance Marriage Equality | The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians could become the first Native American tribe in Michigan to recognize same-sex marriages and only the third in the U.S. The 4,000-member tribe live mostly in the Northern Lower Peninsula, and as a sovereign nation, it can implement marriage equality even though the state of Michigan has a constitutional amendment defining marriage only as a man and a woman. A tribe member pointed out that the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman did not exist until Europeans settlers introduced it.

LGBT

GOP Senate Candidate Claims LGBT Protections Threaten ‘Privacy Rights Of Women In Public Restrooms’

By Igor Volsky on Mar 6, 2012 at 11:10 am

A GOP candidate vying for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Debbie Stabanow (D-MI) in the fall is urging a local town to abandon a legislative effort to protect gays, lesbians and transgender people from discrimination. Gary Glenn, the American Family Association of Michigan president, has written a letter to the city of Mount Pleasant, warning city commissioners that the measure could threaten children’s privacy in “public facilities”:

We’re hopeful that in a time when local governments face many real and pressing challenges, you do not wish to embroil your community in a debate that typically includes homosexual activists’ characterization of Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army and the Boy Scouts as bigots comparable to the Ku Klux Klan, or whether a man who claims to be a woman should have a ‘right’ enforced by city law to share the women’s shower at a local health club with you or your mother or daughter or sister.

“We respectfully urge you not to even consider adopting such a discriminatory and volatile proposal which is clearly a solution in search of a non-existent problem, intended only to advance homosexual activists’ drive to have homosexual behavior and cross-dressing defined by law and endorsed by city government as the moral, social, and legal equivalents of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnic background, and sex.” [...]

“On behalf of our supporters in Mt. Pleasant, we urge you not to adopt such a discriminatory ordinance, which has proven in other jurisdictions to be used to violate the civil and religious free speech rights…and which also poses a threat to the privacy rights of women and children in public restrooms and other public facilities.”

Glenn “led a similar effort in Holland, where the city council eventually rejected the ordinance,” MLive reports.

NEWS FLASH

Flint, Michigan Expands LGBT Non-Discrimination Protections | The city of Flint, Michigan today expanded its non-discrimination protections to shield LGBT people in both housing and public accommodations. The city already had protections in place for employment. The full resolution can be read here. In a poll conducted last year, Michigan voters supported banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity by a margin of 65 to 26 percent. (HT: Equality Michigan.)

Politics

Mitt Romney ‘Remembers’ A Michigan Event That Took Place 9 Months Before He Was Born

By Adam Peck on Feb 27, 2012 at 6:30 pm

For several weeks now, the Mitt Romney campaign has crisscrossed Michigan in an attempt to salvage a badly-needed win in the state where Romney was born and his father served as governor. And in an attempt to overcome several embarrassing unforced errors in the last few days, Romney tried to connect with Michiganders at a tea party rally in Milford on Thursday by “remembering” an event from his childhood that took place nine months before he was born.

A reporter from the Toronto Star, which covers nearby Michigan, caught the blunder:

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.

The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

The National Automobile Golden Jubilee was held in June of 1946. Romney was born on March 12, 1947. Governor George Romney did in fact oversee the day’s festivities, but his son’s retelling is, at best, a patchwork tale stitched together from pieces of his father’s stories.

On Monday, the Romney campaign told the Huffington Post that Romney never explicitly said he was in attendance at the event. “He was simply telling the story about his dad,” an aide told the site.

This isn’t the first time Romney has run into trouble when trying to recall a childhood memory from Michigan. Two weeks ago his campaign ran an ad with a photograph purportedly showing Romney with his father at the Detroit auto show. As ThinkProgress noted, the photo was actually taken from a helipad at the World’s Fair in New York.

NEWS FLASH

Romney: My Wife Drives ‘A Couple Of Cadillacs’ | Mitt Romney’s speech this afternoon to the Detroit Economic Club at Ford Field started off poorly with an embarrassingly below-capacity crowd and only got worse when he made a couple of awkward gaffes towards the end. First, he repeated his bizarre and widely-mocked line about liking Michigan because “the trees are the right height.” Then, he played into the out-of-touch patrician narrative he’s trying to shed when he said his wife drives not one, but “a couple of Cadillacs.” Watch it:

Campaign aides told reporters after the event that Ann Romney has two Cadillac SRX SUVs, one in California and one in Massachusetts.

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Feb 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm

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