ACS rally at the Capitol could pressure a smoking ban vote in the Senate

The much needed and popular workplace smoking ban that passed the House last month may see some action in the Senate this week, based on events in the Capitol in Lansing this week.

That event is the American Cancer Society’s annual Celebration at the State Capitol set for Tuesday. The stated mission of the annual celebration is to “encourage state legislators to make cancer a number one priority,” and smoking and secondhand smoke, the leading causes of cancer, are always major targets.

The more than 600 volunteers will spend the entire day at the Capitol, and the day includes a morning rally, groups of constitutes visiting their Representative and Senator, a Relay For Life event on the lawn of the State Capitol and a closing ceremony. Although registration for the event is already closed because of so many people signing up, you can still come out and show your support.

There is little but politics stopping this bill from going forward. The deadly and harmful effects of secondhand smoke is undisputed, and the evidence from the 38 other states and numerous foreign countries with a ban and new studies that demonstrate a ban will not hurt a bar or restaurant’s business debunks the final argument for implementing a ban.

But the push to get the bill a vote in the Senate over the objections of Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, has been won by the overwhelming support of those voters who support a ban, and they have been relentless in their advocacy.

It’s events like Tuesday’s ACS rally that really demonstrates to lawmakers the support this smoking ban has, and Tuesday’s event may again tip the scales toward a vote in the Senate.

Save a life and give blood this summer

Save a life this summer and take a few minutes to give some blood, and the Livingston County Democratic Party and the Blue Tiger Democrats just happen to be sponsoring a blood drive on June 15.

The blood drive is set for noon to 6 p.m. June 15 at party headquarters, 10321 Grand River Ave. Suite 600 in Brighton, in the Fonda Place office building, just east of Grand River and Old US 23. Blood shortages are typical in the summer months. Approximately 20 percent of the blood donated comes from high schools and colleges, and when school is out, donating blood often takes a back seat to other summer activities.

The blood drive is open to anyone, and we are looking for American blood; not Republican or Democratic blood. To give blood, according to the Red Cross, you must be in good general health and be at least 17 years old. You must weigh at least 110 pounds, and not have donated whole blood in the last 8 weeks (56 days) or double red cells in the last 16 weeks (112 days). "Healthy" means that you feel well and can perform normal activities. If you have a chronic condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure, "healthy" also means that you are being treated and the condition is under control.

The party is also looking for volunteers to help with the blood drive to help with set up, the sign up donors or serve refreshments. If you want to volunteer call Pam Green at (734) 347-0335 or pgreen1210@sbcglobal.net.

The Blue Tiger Democrats were founded in 2005 by Bill Samuels, a longtime activist in Democratic and progressive causes, with the goal of getting the Democratic Party in touch with its original values and getting volunteers involved in civic programs and civic engagement.

Help save a beloved and historic gem

Tom Stanton, author of the book “The Final Season: Fathers, Sons, and One Last Season in a Classic American Ballpark,” said it best when he wrote “Old buildings bring life to stories. They put a foundation to memories.”

Those memories may soon be torn down after a near secret decision earlier this week by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) to demolish what’s left of beautiful and historic Tiger Stadium in the next couple weeks, dashing the hopes, dreams and hard work of the all-volunteer Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy and baseball fans all over the world. Apparently, the meeting where the decision took place occurred with little notice, and no one from the Conservancy was there to speak for the historic stadium that holds millions of cherished memories for generations of Michiganders and former Michiganders.

The Conservancy had hopes to preserve what’s left of the historic stadium at the most famous location in sports at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, just a dugout-to-dugout section, into a $27 million redevelopment project. The remaining stadium would be converted to commercial space and a community center. The playing field would be renovated for youth and high school baseball and community events. Renovated Tiger Stadium will include museum quality exhibits, a banquet hall and retail. Fans will be able to explore the clubhouses, dugouts and the broadcast booth. The most exciting feature that will bring visitors from all over the world to the Stadium and Detroit will be the Harwell Museum.

Beloved and Hall of Fame former Tiger’s broadcaster Ernie Harwell has an extensive and priceless baseball memorabilia collection that is second only to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown he wants to display at the Stadium.

If the DEGC is successful in demolishing the stadium, the Conservancy will lose seven years of hard work and the $22 million they have secured thus far in federal earmarks, grants, and tax credits and the city will lose the jobs the project would create. But far more importantly, baseball fans will lose one of the city’s – and the nation’s – historic gems, creating yet another vacant, blighted space in Detroit.

Thom Linn, President of Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, said there is strong, widespread support for the project, from stadium neighbors in Detroit’s historic Corktown to the entire metro region and beyond. The public outcry over the DEGC’s action has even reached the national news: On Wednesday night on his MSNBC show, Keith Olbermann expressed his outrage about it. Why the city’s leadership made this bad and shortsighted decision is unclear.

Could you imagine the outcry if anyone tried to demolish the beautiful Capitol Building in Lansing, the Fox Theatre or the historic Livingston County Courthouse? Then why are we giving up something with so many pleasant memories so easily?

It’s not too late, and if you love Tiger Stadium like I do then contact the city’s leaders, the state’s leaders and the media and tell them not to destroy memories, history and jobs.

Here is a list of contacts:

-Detroit Mayor David Bing, 313- 224-3400 (9am-5pm)
Fax: 313-224-4433
-all Detroit City Council members


-Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. 313-224-4505 Kenneth.Cockrel@http://www.facebook.com/l/;detroitmi.gov

-Monica Conyers 313-224-4530 ConyersM@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Sheila Cockrel 313-224-1337 S-Cockrel_mb@http://www.facebook.com/l/;ckrl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Barbara Rose Collins 313-224-1299 Collins_MB@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Brenda Jones 313-224-1245 bjones_mb@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Kwame Kenyatta 313-224-1198 K-Kenyatta_MB@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Martha Reeves 313-224-4510 m-reeves_MB@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Alberta Tinsley Talabi 313-224-1645 A_Talabi_mb@http://www.facebook.com/l/;atwpo.ci.detroit.mi.us

-JoAnn Watson 313-224-4535 WatsonJ@http://www.facebook.com/l/;cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us

-Governor Jennifer Granholm (517) 373-3400

-news media of your choice; for starters:
Detroit Free Press –
-City Desk 313-222-6600

-Jim Wilhelm, City Desk Editor 313-222-6521 jwilhelm@http://www.facebook.com/l/;freepress.com

Detroit News
-Front desk 313-222-2300
-Nolan Finley, Editorial Page Editor 313-222-2064
-Walter Middlebrook, Assistant Managing Editor/Metro (313) 222-2429

An oldie but a goodie: Obama is a Muslim

I love the Republicans strategy for talking back the White House, and I hope it continues.

We know they want President Obama and the nation to fail, so when the president foolishly reaches across to the GOP they bite the hand of partisanship and vote no on every important measure he is attempting to implement in an effort to try and fix the near Bush depression. They vote no in the vain hope it fails.

But they have gone back to the election campaign strategy of fear and prejudice of trying to paint the President as a dreaded, Muslim. They are completely twisting his quote from a recent interview with Laurence Haïm, the U.S. correspondent for French television station Canal Plus.

The President is on a trip to the Middle East trying to repair some of the damage and anti-U.S. feeling a U.S. invasion of a Muslim country for no reason caused.

Faux News has been pushing the lie that "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country,’” and now rightwing blogs have picked up on the lie.

The President said, “…if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

That statement is true.

Then, rightwing Faux and rightwing bloggers took the President’s remarks from Obama's April 6 press conference in Turkey, during which he made factual comments about religion in America, and paraphrased to claim he said the U.S. is not a Christian nation. That is true, but that’s not really what he said.

“I think that where -- where there's the most promise of building stronger U.S.-Turkish relations is in the recognition that Turkey and the United States can build a model partnership in which a predominantly Christian nation and a predominantly Muslim nation, a Western nation and a nation that straddles two continents -- that we can create a modern international community that is respectful.”

“As I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

That is true. In the Bill of Rights, Amendment I says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That means we are not a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.

Senate Republicans’ action in Senate session demonstrate lies and hypocrisy

LANSING - If you looked up the word hypocrisy in the dictionary you might find the Republican Party’s platform and a photo of Alan Cropsey.

Senate Democrats attempted to discharge the package of bills previously approved by he House that would end immunity for drug companies that was defeated along party lines on Tuesday, and Cropsey had the nerve to accuse Democrats of playing politics; apparently because General Motors had just declared abruptly. Senate Republicans have been using the excuse of the budget crisis for their failure to act on any meaningful legislation, yet the session on Tuesday lasted just an hour.

The bills would end immunity for drug companies if their drugs kill or maim the people who take them, and it would repel the current ban enacted in 1996 by then Gov. John Engler designed to shield huge pharmaceutical companies from any responsibility.

Democrats tried to discharge it from the Committee on Government Operations and Reform, chaired by Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop on April 30. That committee never meets and it’s where bills are sent to die, but Republicans postponed it until June 2. They did so again today. Michigan is the only state in the nation that shields big drug companies that make and sell harmful products from giving legal recourse to victims and their families.

“Michigan’s one-in-the-nation drug industry immunity law treats Michigan victims like second-class citizens, a status that’s further reinforced every time the Senate Republicans delay even discussing this issue,” said Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing. “While Mike Bishop and his colleagues cowardly hide behind the argument that this issue is not germane to the budget and economic issues before us, they take up legislation to address double-crested cormorants or create more specialty license plates.”

Sen. Tupac Hunter, D-Detroit, noted that Bishop finally referred House Bill 4377, the workplace smoking ban that was approved with bipartisan support last month, to a committee, but it was the committee where bills go to die.

“I’m praying and I’m hoping that our Majority Leader had this bill referred to his committee because he wants to stand up and take leadership on this issue,” Hunter said. “I am hoping that he referred it to his committee because he intends on holding hearings; he intends on hearing from the Michigan citizens and their families who are affected by all of the awful diseases that have resulted in death because of smoking.”

But Bishop said he has no intention of moving it, despite overwhelming support for the ban from the public.

Cropsey then pulls out his standard budget excuse for only bringing up legislation addressing specialty license plates and double-crested cormorants, and he then has the guts to accuse Democrats of playing politics.

“Once again today, I hate to say it, but the other side of the aisle has been trying to play partisan politics in a very serious situation in which they seem to totally ignore the fact that General Motors has declared bankruptcy,” he said.

At the height of hypocrisy, he then blames the lack of a smoking ban on the House Democrats, and then he outright lies when he says the House failed to take up the version the Senate passed last year that had no exceptions to a ban.

“I would also like to remark that certain people have tried to say that the Senate needs to be working on a smoking ban,” he said. “The Senate did work on a smoking ban and passed through a complete smoking ban last year. It was the House of Representatives that failed to take that up.”

That is a lie. In September of last year the House took up the version the Senate passed, and it got the majority of votes; but it was not the majority of those serving. The Senate only took up one version.

Cropsey was assigned to the conference committee last December that is supposed to work out a compromise between the two versions, but he refused to compromise and admitted it.

O'Reilly shamefully spins out of control to avoid responsibility for hate he whipped up

The spin from the rightwing terrorist groups and rightwing commentators on the murder of Kansas Dr. George Tiller is mind-boggling.

Tiller was shot to death on Sunday as he served as an usher during Evangelical Lutheran Church in America services. Tiller was a long-time target for the anti-abortion extremists because he dared perform a legal procedure on women who chose to have an abortion in a safe manner. The Women's Health Care Services, where he served as the medical director, was one of only three nationwide clinics which would provide abortion after the 21st week of pregnancy. Make that two.

One of the people who most created the atmosphere that led to the murder, Rightwing demagogue Bill O'Reilly, shamefully spun the story and refused to take responsibility. His was one of the worst examples of whipping up hate against Dr. Tiller. He was discussed in at least 28 episodes before his death. For four years he called him a baby killer, said he had blood on his hands and would “kill a baby the day before it was born.”

There was serious spin going on in the “no spin zone.”

He used the occasion to attack liberals, and he made a point of pointing out the alleged shooter’s ties to the anti-government Militia while ignoring his ties to the rightwing domestic terrorist group “Operation Rescue.” He said “Fox-haters” are using the murder of Dr. Tiller to attack him. Can this guy’s ego get any larger? He brought on two people to agree with him; Kris Kobach and Brian Russell.

He calls Kobach a law professor and mentions he is running for Kansas Secretary of State. He fails, of course, to mention that he is a right-winger and the chair of the Kansas Republican Party for two years. Russell is a “psychologist and attorney” who has appeared on O'Reilly’s show in the past to talk about Dr. Tiller. Obviously, we know his position.

So much for fair and balanced, and he doesn’t want anyone on who has a different viewpoint.

Jed Lewison, at Daily Kos, put together a devastating video of O'Reilly’s personal mission against Dr. Tiller.

The alleged shooter joins a long list of anti-abortion terrorists.

Randall Terry, the founder of the domestic terrorist group “Operation Rescue,” tried to distance himself from the hateful and dangerous atmosphere he created, but he just reinforced it, celebrating the death of Dr. Tiller.

“The point that must be emphasized over, and over, and over again: pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller's death. George Tiller was a mass-murder and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

These terrorists are no better than Al-Qaeda. Make no mistake; this is to intimidate doctors from performing a legal procedure.

All GOP county board balks at $7.50 a year to support the troops

It seems like a no-brainer: who wouldn’t mind spend $7.50 a year to help military veterans and their families out of a financial hardship? The answer is, apparently, the all-Republican Livingston County Board of Commissioners.

The Livingston County Veterans Committee, consisting of five members appointed by the Board of Commissioners to oversee operations of the Veterans Affairs Department, wants the board to authorize a levy, required by law anyway, to fund the depleted Veterans Relief fund. Public Act 214 provides that a county shall levy one-tenth of a mill to fund Veterans Relief.

Livingston County has not been levying the required millage like the surrounding counties of Shiawassee, Washtenaw, Oakland, and Ingham do. The veterans committee took their request to the board’s Human Resources Committee last week, and the committee said they want to study it further. The committee was asking for half of the levy they can ask for.

The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus has an editorial advocating for the levy. According to the paper, “the one-twentieth of a mill would cost the owner of a home with a market value of $300,000 about $7.50 a year. It's peanuts to the taxpayer, but it would raise $400,000 a year for the veteran’s office.”

The last time I checked, the average market value of a home in Livingston County is just over $200,000. This is a small sacrifice to make for those who defend the country.

I’m a little tired of right-wingers calling people who didn’t support the Iraq fiasco traitors, and co-opting the slogan “Support the Troops.” For most right-wingers, it’s just a campaign slogan, and they refuse to put their money where their mouth is.

The concluding line of the editorial is great, saying “The ball is in the commissioners' court. They need to step up to ensure that veterans' needs are met. Otherwise, the Memorial Day ceremonies are, to them, more sham than substance.”

However, they also say “the all-Republican board likes to boast of its low tax rate. It need not compromise that stand. If it imposes a tax levy for the veterans, it need only reduce its county tax by the same amount. That way, the veterans are served and the county's tax rate is unchanged.”

I don’t think that is incorrect.

The statute says the “…purpose of creating a fund for the relief of honorably discharged indigent members of the army, navy, air force, marine corps, coast guard, and women's auxiliaries of all wars or military expeditions in which the United States of America has been, is, or may hereafter be, a participant.”

It also says, “Funds raised in accordance with the provisions of this section may be expended for the relief of indigent wives and children of active duty soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, coast guardsmen, nurses, and members of the women's auxiliaries during the continuance of present hostilities and prior to their discharge.”

What that is saying to me - and I am not a lawyer - is that the millage should be used to establish a fund to provide money to help indigent vets and their families. Funding of the Livingston County Veterans Affairs Office is separate from the fund.

Rightwing extremists display hypocrisy in murder of doctor

The senseless murder of Kansas Dr. George Tiller on Sunday illustrated the height of hypocrisy of the right and the so-called “pro-life” crowd.

Tiller was shot to death as he served as an usher during Evangelical Lutheran Church in America services in front of his family. Tiller was a long-time target for the anti-abortion extremists because he dared perform a legal procedure on women who chose to have an abortion in a safe manner. The Women's Health Care Services, where he served as the medical director, was one of only three nationwide which would provide abortion after the 21st week of pregnancy.

What’s really amazing is the messages of sympathy coming from the extremists. The domestic terrorist group “Operation Rescue” issued a statement, saying: “We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ.”

The alleged murder of Dr. Tiller, Scott Roeder, has ties to “Operation Rescue.”

With the way the right whips up hatred against people it disagrees with, no one can be surprised at this murder. We saw it by the Bushies calling people who disagree with the war they lied the country into a traitor, the hatred of President Obama and now this.

A quick check of the headlines of rightwing blogs in Michigan tells the story.

“Breaking: Abortionist George "Baby Killer" Tiller Shot Dead In Kansas”
“Dr. Tiller the baby killer has been Murdered”
“Wickedness”

So much for being “shocked at the disturbing news.”

Prior to this attack, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms outside of the Wichita clinic on August 19, 1993 by Shelley Shannon, described as a “Christian,” pro-life activist, who received an 11-year prison sentence for the crime.

With the hatred the right whipped up, it was just a matter of time before this heroic doctor was murdered. This is a former Navy doctor whose specialty was dermatology. He was pressured to take over his father's family practice, who performed abortions. After hearing about a woman that had died from an illegal abortion, Tiller stayed in Wichita to continue his father's practice.

Rightwing demagogue Bill O'Reilly was one of the worst examples of whipping up hate against Dr. Tiller. He was discussed in at least 28 episodes before his death. On the show he was sometimes described as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and O'Reilly warned of Tiller's "judgment day.” November 3, 2006, Bill O'Reilly featured an exclusive segment on his show, The O'Reilly Factor, saying that he has an "inside source" with official clinic documentation indicating that George Tiller performed late-term abortions to alleviate "temporary depression" in the pregnant woman.