Who is Sara Smolenski?

Yard signs are an interesting barometer of local campaigns. A non-scientific perusal can reveal a lot about of what type of campaign someone is running and where their support is coming from.

The garden variety sign in a font yard is a pretty clear indication that an individual backs a candidate and the candidate has made the effort to get signs produced and distributed. This costs money and requires an organization beyond the candidate’s immediate friends and family. No signs indicate a symbolic campaign with no serious effort.

“Orphan” signs planted in vacant lots and highway right-of-ways indicate a campaign that bought signs but didn’t know how to distribute them. These are sort of sad, especially when they are still there in December. A flurry in the last week of the campaign can also indicate that they just bought too damn many.

Most interesting are the big signs that crop up in the front yards of businesses and commercial establishments. These indicate that the fix is in, and the Real Estate Board or Chamber of Commerce have put the move on, which brings me to the recent blast of signs for 63rd District Court Judge Sara Smolenski.

Overnight, a ton of really annoying signs have popped up, almost exclusively on commercial sites. These are big two-part jobs with her name on top and bullshit statements like “a History of Integrity” or “Common Sense on the Bench”.

Judge Smolenski, you may remember, is the one who put the political hit out on Rockford Judge Steven Servaas for opposing the move to consolidate the District Court in a fancy new $9 million building on the East Beltline. Servaas wants to stay in Rockford and Smolenski tried to railroad him out of office on trumped up charges, displaying neither integrity nor common sense.

She has filed no campaign finance disclosure statements and these signs look like a big investment, so who is paying for them? The Press likes to call her a Democrat but she has had nothing to do with the party for many years and seems to have gone over hard to the Dark Side.

So who’s behind her, and why?

Language

The conservatives have excelled over the past decade in using language to frame the debate about complex issues. Think "tax relief" vs. "tax cuts" or "global climate change" vs. "global warming". The list goes on and on and has been well documented in scholarly books like Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff.

Since it is not a Republican/conservative issue, the bill being currently debated in Washington is properly described as a "bail out". You can be sure if the conservatives were really behind it, it would be a "rescue"

West Michigan Fantasy Conference

For those of us who didn't have the $560 to register, the "Movers and Shakers of the West Michigan business world" descended on Grand Rapids last Thursday and Friday for a Regional Policy Conference, which from the photos looked more like a balding white guys love fest on the Grand.

My favorite pictures were where the big guys got loose by taking off their ties. They are still wearing their dark suits, but someone must have told them to loosen up, so, bold innovators that they are, they lost the ties. I love it when plutocrats take off their ties. No surprise that Unions and Democrats were noticeably lacking

Better yet was their list of Priorities. Apparently they got really hi-teck and had little meter thingies wrapped around their little weenies that would register when they were getting hot (don't know if the ties had come off yet). And the list is:

Eliminate the Single Business Tax (8.65 of 10)

Implement Right to Work (i.e. kill the unions)(8.08)

Increase funding for health care providers with effective prevention practices (no idea what this means)(7.58)

Streamline state's permitting practices (i.e. no more regulations)(6.81)

Update funding mechanisms for transportation infrastructure (huh?)(6.34)

So this was the best they could do? They really didn't need a conference to figure out that they hate taxes, unions and regulations, I mean what else does the WM business community stand for? The other two points make no sense at all but must have looked good on the Powerpoint slides.

They all loved it - and it filled some space at the ultra-fabulous new JW Marriott so they're going to do it again in two years. Mark your calendar.

Thanks George

The slow motion collapse that is decimating Wall Street is not a random event that just happened to occur in 2008. It is the direct result of the Bush administration’s mis-management of the economy, and their willful negligence in sweeping away regulations that might have prevented this disaster.

It started with the Bush tax cuts that overwhelmingly favored the rich. This was followed by Alan Greenspan’s Fed dropping interest rates to absurdly low levels to try to energize a moribund economy. This in turn led to the real estate bubble, which was facilitated by lax regulations that allowed lenders to give mortgages to anyone who walked in the door - regardless of whether they had the ability to pay the money back. Closing the loop was Wall Street bankers waving a magic wand over junk mortgages and turning them into triple A bonds.

A small number of bankers, brokers, traders and executives made vast sums of money while the game was hot – multi-million dollar paydays that West Michigan workers can only dream of. Now that the bubble has collapsed, U.S. taxpayers are expected to pick up the tab. Heads they win, tails we lose.

This is what happens when a Government organizes itself around the philosophy that businesses should be allowed to regulate themselves, and that unrestrained free market capitalism is the only path to prosperity.

American taxpayers have been taken for a ride, and the same people who brought you this have the nerve to ask for four more years.

Dear NPR

Dear Sirs;

I have been a devoted listener and member of NPR for decades and I deeply appreciate your ability to produce fair and honest reporting about complex issues.

However, I was truly shocked this morning when Mara Liason essentially gave her approval to the outright and blatant lies being produced by McCain campaign. When she stated that winning is important to the Republicans, and that if they have to "win dirty" so be it, I nearly drove off the road.

This statement undercuts everything NPR stands for. As far as Ms. Liason is concerned, the truth is now relative in political campaigns, and it's perfectly OK to elect a President based on lies.

She should be removed from the political beat immediately and assigned to something more suitable to her opinions, such as fashion or gardening.

Sometimes you actually have to write to the paper

To the Editors;

The Obama campaign has registered millions of new voters this year, including many African Americans who have never voted before. Although this strategy was clearly intended to benefit the Democrats, it benefits the country as well by expanding democracy for all.

It is shocking to learn that Michigan Republicans are gearing up an organized campaign to try to prevent many of these new voters from exercising their right to participate in the coming election. The Chairman of the Macomb County GOP announced that his organization will use lists of foreclosed homes to challenge voters at the polls, claiming that their legal residency is somehow suspect.

Just imagine that you are going through the agony of foreclosure, and when you arrive at the poll someone stands up and says you don’t have the right to vote. What would you do if this was the first election you had ever voted in? Hang your head in shame and walk back to your family home where a for-sale sign sits in the yard? What would you say to your children? That you’ve lost your home and now you’ve been turned away at the polls?

This is not something that should happen in America. We are a better country than that, and anyone who plans to engage in this kind of voter suppression is a coward and a scoundrel who doesn’t deserve to live here.

Let's see if they print it.

Voter Supression

Given the huge success the Obama campaign has had registering voters, it should be no surprise the the GOP is going to do everything they can to prevent these Americans from voting. This is a cowardly, shameless and despicable tactic, which I guess is why it comes so naturally to them.

The game starts by having not enough polling places and voting machines in urban (i.e. Democratic) precincts. If that can't be arranged, the next step is intimidating voters through misinformation and threats. Examples include posting fake notices of polling places and election dates, and announcing that
if you have parking tickets outstanding, or are late on child support payments, you will be arrested if you vote. I heard one today that if public university students vote outside their home districts, they might have problem with residency status for their tuition. These are all lies.

If intimidation fails, the Republicans send challengers to the polls to claim that voters are ineligable. The Chairman of the Macomb County GOP just announced a new tactic of using foreclosures to challenge legal residence - that if you live in a house being foreclosed on, you can't vote.

The truth is, you can vote even if you are homeless, but the challenge will gum up the process and cause long lines to get even longer - another way to discourage voters who can't stand around for hours waiting.

Democrats don't do this; only the Republican patriots engage in this pathetic tactic.

This Can't be True

In a Time/CNN poll released yesterday, Obama leads McCain 49 to 45 in Michigan. This is good.

What is un-fucking believable is that Ralph Nader somehow scored 6% of the vote, plus 1% for the Green Party candidate.

How, after the Nader vote lost Florida in 2000 and led to eight unbearable years of George Bush, can any sentient being throw their vote away on this irrelevant, narcissistic, asshole. I'm sorry, but it's time for someone to come down on this guy hard and ask him if he really wants to throw another election to the Republicans.

Jen Stands In

Watching Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sibelius basking in the reflected glow from the Obama campaign, I was wondering how Jen felt - standing by the wall with no one to dance with? Her date ditched her and how is she going to get to Washington without a ride?

Today's announcement that she had volunteered to be the debate prep stand-in for Sarah (lipstick) Palin shows she's back in the game. Biden said yes so she has a new partner. Way to go Jen!