MDP Convention energizes base

DETROIT – Reverend Wendell Anthony, the President of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, fired up the crowd at Detroit’s Cobo Hall on Saturday at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention, giving the party faithful the zeal they will need to take back the country and the state in 2012.

“We are letting Glenn Beck steal the dream of Martin Luther King and turning it into a nightmare,” he said.

Thousands of people turned out fore the winter convention, and they spent the day in constituency and district caucuses, and they heard from Democratic leaders, both state and national. Party faithful had to get over their disappointment in November, and they talked about defending vital programs for the middle class and the poor and look to 2012 to re-elect President Obama and take back the Michigan and U.S. House.

“I say I’m the leader of the Senate Democrats not the minority leader because we are not the minority party in Michigan,” said Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing. “We don’t go from been an overwhelmingly blue state in 2008 to being the minority.”

Democrats simply did not turn out in 2010, and we have to do a better job energizing our base. The fact remains, when more people vote, Democrats tend to win.

“My opponent (in November) got four more votes; four votes more than the college kid who ran against me two years ago; I got 5,000 votes less this time,” said Rep. Mark Meadows,” D-East Lansing. “Now, that may be my fault, but there were 5,000 Democrats that did not come out to vote.”

Thursday will be, to quote extremist Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, like an atomic bomb was dropped in Lansing when Gov. Rick Snyder unveils his Top Secret budget recommendation. He has never said what will be cut, not during the campaign and not after elected, but pundits expect the cuts to be deep and extreme. His opponent in November, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, thanked people for supporting him, but he also said we must fight the cuts that mortgage Michigan’s future for some short term cuts.

“We are not going to let this crew come in and dismantle Michigan,” he said. “They say they are going to take back Michigan; they mean they are going to take it back to before the New Deal.”

Whitmer said the first goal is to defend against the elimination of the popular and effective Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), what former Republican President Ronald Reagan called “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

They have established a web site to protect the tax credit Snyder wants to kill that helps reward 800,000 people who go to work everyday and helps families make ends meet by keeping more of their paycheck.

“He says it’s a handout, but it helps people who work 40 hours a week put food on the table,” Whitmer said. “He wants to take that and give it to his rich friends.”

The situation is not much different on the national level where Republicans want deep, damaging cuts after giving tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent that will deepen the budget deficit.

“Our Congress is in the mode of a reverse Robin Hood; they want to take from the poor to give to the rich,” said U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Flint.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, said the situation is not much different in the Senate, but the good news is it is controlled by the Democrats.

“The party of nope has been happy just to stop progress; now, they want to turn back progress,” he said.

Levin also said Republicans are more interested in grabbing more power than solving the country’s problems.

“The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has said his top priority is to make Barack Obama a one-term president,” he said. “The top priority of Senate Democrats are jobs.”

House Committee considering stripping legal ads from newspapers

LANSING -- Weekly and daily newspapers struggling to survive could be dealt a deathblow if they lose legal ads that are a steady source of ad revenue, and that could happen under a package of bills the House Judiciary Committee is considering.

The Committee took testimony on Wednesday on a package of bills that would allow local governments to post the ads on their web sites or on their public access cable TV channels. The law requires the municipality to post notices of meetings and ordinances in a newspaper of general circulation in the municipality in order to keep the public informed and for a permanent record. Some new ordinances can be very long, and depending on the newspaper’s ad rate, it can be expensive.

The Judiciary Committee took testimony on two packages so bills, but they did not act on them. Rep. Pam Byrnes, D-Chelsea, was the primary sponsor of a three-bill package – House Bills 5845, 4847 and 5847, that would create a definition of a newspaper and only allow a very limited use of alternative publishing for governmental notices where appropriate newspapers were not available.

Rep. Doug Geiss, D-Taylor, is the main sponsor of another package that includes HB 5916-5917 and HB 5848 and 5853. That package gives local clerks more leeway to use the Internet, cable TV and other means for official posting.

“The heart and soul of legal notices is government transparency, and we take that very seriously,” said Rep. Rebekak Warren, D-Ann Arbor. “That’s where the future of communications going and the devil is in the details.”

A long line of local government officials testified in favor of the bills, saying how much it costs them to place the ads. However, a few local newspaper editors and members of the Michigan Press Association (MPA) did testify against the bills. Their position is that newspapers are more independent than a government web site, and publication in newspapers creates a permanent record that can be verified.

Although no vote was taken, the committee seemed to be leaning toward allowing legal notices to be published by the local government, but not everyone was 100 percent convinced.

“I was must be very old fashioned because I don’t have cable, and I consider myself an informed citizen because I read the newspaper,” said Rep. Tonya Schuitmaker, R- Mattawan. “A concern of mine is; when do we stop. Would we allow this for court notices and foreclosure notices?"

The committee haring lasted almost three hours, and there were still people waiting to testify. Committee Chair Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, said more testimony would be taken at the next hearing date next week.

DCH sullies the reputation of Howell icon

Those people with no health insurance in Livingston County may have lost a huge asset after the Michigan Department of Community Health (DCH) suspended the medical license of Howell icon Dr. Louis "Pat" May.

DCH officials claim Doc May wrote eight controlled-substance prescriptions after his controlled-substance license lapsed and the department suspended May's medical license March 24. May denies that claim, saying he has not written a prescription since he voluntary gave up his narcotics license in 2008.

May founded the Howell Melon Festival, and the summer festival features “Doc May's 2nd Annual Commemorative Melon Ride 2010.” He also has a city park named in his honor. He has enjoyed his image as a country doctor since the day he received his medical degree from the University of Georgia in 1947 and service in World War II, and he has practiced medicine in Howell for some 60 years.

For at least the past five years, Doc May, 87, has been semi-retired, and he saw patients two hours a day for a small office-visit fee at his office on Michigan Avenue, and for two hours each Sunday morning he saw patients for free. Most of his patients do not have health insurance so he charges what they can afford, and the rest simply do not want to find another doctor. He no longer has his office, and he sees patients in his home, located just a few blocks from his former office. The nearest free medical clinic is in Whitmore Lake near the Livingston/Washtenaw County line.

Doc May is also a big proponent of natural cures, and he can often be found every Sunday morning in warm weather at the Howell Farmer’s Market selling Doc May Therapeutic Soy products.

This is not the first time Doc May has had a run in with the DCH. In 2008 he came under scrutiny for recycling unused drugs to his low-income patients. In January of 2008, Doc May began advertising in a local newspaper seeking donations of used medical equipment and unused drugs. With life-saving prescription drugs costing as much as $200 a pill, Doc May thought it was a huge waste to throw the drugs away.

Doc May agreed to stop accepting drugs, but he continued to accept medical equipment.

Recycling drugs in Michigan is not unprecedented. The Cancer Drug Repository Program allows unopened drugs to be donated to a pharmacy, hospital, nonprofit clinic or health-care professional that elects to participate in the program.

Many people believe the programs should include more drugs for seniors and low and middle-income people. There was a bill in the Michigan House of Representative that would allow all drugs except narcotics to be donated for indigent patients. House Bill 4897 died in House Health Policy Committee and had to be reintroduced. HB 5231 was introduced by Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, on Aug 4, and it is awaiting action in the Health Policy Committee.

Doc May said he really doesn’t want his license back, but that he didn't want to lose it like this.

Some lawmakers are fighting back in the war to destroy the middle class

The Republicans have declared all out war against the middle class, working men and women and the labor unions that created the middle class with so-called “right to work laws.”

The good news is both the U.S. Congress and the Michigan House are fighting to protect the fast-disappearing middle class with some new legislation. In March the U.S. House passed HR 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, that would allow workers to organize a union free of an employer’s intimidation, free from fear of being fired and free from retaliation. The bill will allow employees at a worksite who want a union to simply sign a card clearly indicating support for a union, stiffen penalties for employers who fire union organizers and sympathizers and it addresses companies who simply refusing to bargain in good faith.

On the state level, the House passed House Bill 4316, known as the “Worker Freedom Act” sponsored by Representative Mark Meadows, D-Lansing. The bill would prohibit employers from making workers attend mandatory meetings where employers have a captive audience to put out negative and anti-union information. The bill passed by a 56-49 vote on July 18, 2007 and is currently in the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee.

When workers band together for fair wages, workplace safety and protection against unfair labor practices, the pressure to break any pro-union move is intense, complete with intimidation and violence on occasion. Union organizers must meet with workers after working hours away from the plant or shop, and often the only initial contact they have with workers to make their case is when workers are speeding out of the employee parking lot and organizers try and pass a flyer or other info to the employee. Management does not have that problem.

Often, companies hire anti-union, union-busting consultants as part of expensive union –busting campaigns where workers are subjected to anti-union propaganda and mis-information at mandatory group meetings. Employees are also subjected to threats of dismissal and intimidation at mandatory, one-on-one, closed-door meetings.

According to the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency,

A study of more than 400 union representation election campaigns, found that during 92 percent of union organizing drives, employers forced their employees to attend closed-door anti-union meetings. In addition, 78 percent of employers directed supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to employees in one-on-one meetings.

This bill will prohibit that unfair practice. However, the bill has an uphill battle in the Senate, but perhaps some pressure from voters will force them to act responsibly and bring this to a vote. I’m sure a large number of Republican Senators benefited from the concessions won by unions over the years.