School crisis catches attention
It's encouraging that the top local issue -- other than the fate of Kwame Kilpatrick -- on the minds of Michigan's Democratic delegates is fixing the Detroit Public Schools.
The release of new graduation figures that confirm the utter failure of DPS seems to have caught some attention. Ideas are being discussed for how to radically transform the schools.
Not much concrete is on the table yet, but several state lawmakers who are in Denver have said they'll be offering education fixes when they return home.
I hope so. That the Detroit school failure has been allowed to get to this point without action by lawmakers is unforgiveable. The number of children who have been doomed to bleak futures because of the inaction of elected officials numbers in the tens of thousands.
The rallying cry should now be "Not Another Child Lost."
All about Clintons
Former President Bill Clinton will take the stage at the Democratic National Convention in just over an hour. Democrats need him to be good, but not too good.
Democrats have their fingers crossed that Clinton doesn't try to upstage tomorrow night's speech by the nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.
But Clinton, as likely as not, will be Clinton. He and Sen. Hillary Clinton, the second-place finisher, have done all they could to make this convention about them.
Hillary Clinton gave a command performance last night. But instead of leaving it at that and walking away, she allowed this morning's spectacle of placing her name in nomination to go forward.
It was done under the guise of party unity and appeasing women voters. But it looked much more like Clinton ego.
Michigan backers sour on Edwards
Michigan's Democratic convention delegation includes a lot of former supporters of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
I asked one former Edwards volunteer if he was disappointed at news that Edwards had engaged in an extramarital affair even while preparing for his presidential run.
"Disappointed? No, I'm angry," he said. "We trusted him and he lied to us."
I haven't found anyone willing to give Edwards the benefit of the doubt. I don't know what Edwards plans in terms of a political future, but I don't suspect he'll be getting much help from his former Michigan pals.
Can Dems keep Kilpatrick out of Denver?
Democrats might want to file an amicus brief to support the Wayne County Prosecutor's appeal of a judge's ruling that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick can attend the Democratic Natonal Convention in Denver.
Kilpatrick had been under severe travel restrictions and an ankle tether for violating his parole on perjury, corruption and assault charges.
But Waye Circuit Judge Leonard Townsend relaxed those limits at a hearing this morning, and then seemingly out of the blue annouced that Kilpatrick could attend the convention later this month. Kilpatrick is a superdelegate pledged to Sen. Barack Obama.
Townsend must be a secret Republican operative. The last thing Democrats want is the spectacle of Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in the midst of the Michigan delegation casting his vote for Obama.
Michigan Democrats are already worried that the Kilpatrick scandal will hurt Obama in this critical state. They're particularly concerned about a videotape showing Obama singing Kilpatrick's praises during a visit to Detroit last year. That's bound to find its way into a campaign commercial soon.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm condemned Republicans in advance for any attempt to link Kilpatrick to Obama. Never mind that she and other Democrats can't mention Sen. John McCain's name without also saying "Bush."
Of course Kilpatrick's legal troubles will factor into the Michigan vote. He's one of the state's top Democrats. And he's an Obama backer. Guilt by association has always been a part of politics.
Democrats will be doing everything they can to keep Kilpatrick out of Denver. You have to believe that pressure is being applied to his mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, to keep "y'all's boy" at home.
Kilpatrick wandering around the convention floor tailed by cameras and wearing an big Obama button has to be good for 3 or 4 percentage points for McCain in Michigan.
No way Dems are going to let that happen.
Obama still doesn't get Detroit
Let's see: The unreasonable and oppressive fuel economy standards Sen. Barack Obama supports will cost Detroit automakers up to $150 billion to meet.
And the best the Democratic presidential candidate can do during his visit to Michigan this week is pledge $4 billion in federal assistance for the auto industry? General Motors is losing nearly that much every month.
Obama also pledged himself to getting one million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. But he neglected to say where the electricity would come from, or how an auto industry that is gushing red ink will pay for the research and development. His $4 billion won't even get the engine started.
Obama is cool to new nuclear plants, doesn't want to talk about coal and only half-heartedly supports increasing oil supplies. So doese he think we can do it all with windmills? If so, he's dreaming.
There's no honesty in Obama's proposals. If he wants one million electric vehicles, then he has to support more power plants, including nuclear and coal plants. There's no other way to get there.
And if he wants the automakers to survive, he's got to stop adding to their cost pressures with ridiculous regulatory demands that could very well put them out of business.
Charge Kilpatrick with hate crime?
Maybe Kwame Kilpatrick should be charged with a hate crime if his altercation with Wayne County officers rises to the level of criminal assault.
Witnesses say the Detroit mayor shouted at a female investigator: "How can a black woman be riding in a car with a man named White?" The detective Kilpatrick is accused of assaulting is Brian White.
It's hard to imagine a white mayor of any city in America getting away with saying: How can a white woman be riding in a car with a man named Black?
The calls for his head would be thunderous.
But in Detroit, we continue to let the racist remarks of Kilpatrick and some others of his ilk slide.
And that's why this garbage never stops.
Give McCain credit for still standing
The most remarkable thing about today's Detroit News/WXYZ Action News poll measuring the presidential race in Michigan is not that Sen. Barack Obama has closed the four-point lead McCain enjoyed in May and now is locked in a virutal tie here.
It's that McCain is still in the race at all, considering what he's running against.
McCain faces an opponent who's not just super-funded, but is also backed by the nation's media.
For every 48 minutes of coverage McCain gets on national news broadcasts, Obama gets 114 minutes. Likewise, Obama enjoys a two-to-one edge on the covers of the national news magazines. Newsweek, in particular, seems to have taken on the assignment of explaining away any and all concerns voters may have about the Democratic candidate.
The column inches and broadcast minutes for all of McCain's visits to Michigan don't add up to those given the single trip Obama made to Detroit last month. A local television reporter advised viewers that "there's still room in Joe Louis Arena for you to come down and be part of this historic event."
Last week, I listened to a National Public Radio report on presidential fundraising explain that Obama's huge fundraising advantage wasn't as significant as it seems because Obama has foresworn public matching funds, while McCain is taking the money.
No mention was made that by not taking matching funds, Obama will be free to raise and spend as much money as he can, and will likely make his the most well-funded presidential campaign in history. That missing clarifying information was essential to understanding the story.
When Cindy McCain appeared on The View last spring, who even knew? Michelle Obama's visit to the estrogen-fueled talk show was played as a coming out party.
And there's no point even bringing up CNN.
With all that extra help, Obama ought to be creaming McCain, not just in Michigan, but everywhere. Give McCain lots of credit for hanging in there in the face of the unprecedented meda effort to ignore him.
Mich. never had a chance for VW
Michigan learned today it lost its bid to win Volkswagen of North America's new auto plant.
VW will put the plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.
What's Tennessee got that Michigan doesn't?
Low taxes, for starters. Tennessee doesn't have a state income tax.
It also doesn't have a pro-union bias. Tennessee is a right-to-work state, which seems to be important to foreign automakers.
Michigan never had a chance.
Pelosi dishonest on oil supplies
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the Bush administration to release part of the strategic oil reserve to spare Americans from rising gasoline and heating oil bills.
Clearly, the California Democrat understands the relationship between supply and price. And yet Pelosi remains staunchly opposed to tapping into America's vast offshore and Alaskan oil pools.
What, then, does she suggest the nation do once it burns through its strategic reserves, which have been aside to protect the country against supply interuptions, and not price spikes. Where will the new supplies come from to moderate prices?
Pelosi also seems to be working against her own environmental agenda. The higher gasoline prices are forcing American motorists into more fuel efficient vehicles, precisely the objective she sought when she helped impose oppressive fuel performance standards on automakers last fall. In driving less, they're also producing less greenhouse gases, another Pelosi objective.
PThe speaker's contradictory positions reflect the nation's dishonest approach to energy.
We say we want to use less oil, and then howl when prices go up. Higher prices are the most effective means of encouraging conservation.
Politicians like Pelosi want to pretend that they can spare individual consumers the pain of their restrictive environmental policies.
That's impossible. Congress has limited oil supply by placing vast stretches of the nation off-limits to exploration, and thus helped drive up the cost of fuel. Congress increased demand for corn by adopting ethanoal mandates, and thus helped drive up food cots.
But don't hold your breath waiting for Pelosi and her peers to accept responsibility for the consequences of their policies.
Gun rights still tenuous
For years voters have been warned that electing a Republican president would tip the balance of the Supreme Court and threaten a woman's right to choose an abortion.
Despite the GOP holding the White House for 20 of the past 28 years, abortion rights are still intact.
I wonder if Second Amendment rights would fare as well if Democrats gain the White House and are able to move the court back to the left?
Today's ruling by the court affirming that the right to bear arms belongs to the individual is welcome news for gun owners. But the fact that it came on 5-4 vote shows how tenuous is that right to keep and carry a weapon.
One more left-leaning justice and the court could have just as easily ruled that the Second Amendment is the only constitutional right assigned to the state rather than the citizen.
Gun owners should should keep the same wary eye on the court make-up as abortion rights activists have.
