THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

CROFOOT VINDICATED

Last week Jack Crofoot contacted us with good news.

As you will recall, Mr. Crofoot was facing a trial on criminal charges pressed by the grocery chain Spartan Stores.  On the advice of Warner Norcross attorney Alex DeYonker, Spartan was trying to intimidate Mr. Crofoot into silence about his mistreatment by the company after one its security guards had falsely twisted a honest mistake into a shoplifting beef against him.  (Mr. Crofoot, who is legally blind, exited a Spartan grocery store with an unchecked item in his shopping cart.  The security guard accosted him when he was going back into the store to correct his mistake.)

Grand Rapids Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers gleefully piled on to prosecute Mr. Crofoot, even after Spartan's security manager contacted her to drop the charges.  You see, the company's surveillance video proved Mr. Crofoot's innocence, and the security manager knew that.  This put Spartan Stores in a pickle:  They had falsely accused Mr. Crofoot of a crime, about which he had been making public complaints.  DeYonker tried to bully Mr. Crofoot into silence by hanging the possibility of future prosecution over his head if he didn't shut up, but Mr. Crofoot refused to be cowed.  So Spartan pressed on with charges, with Bloemers happily carrying their water in court.

This shouldn't have been a tremendous problem for Mr. Crofoot to overcome, because of the evidence of the Spartan surveillance video.  However, Spartan refused to release to the court the portion of the video that exonerated Mr. Crofoot, and Mr. Crofoot's public defender did not want to be bothered with defending his client.  (After all, that would mean working for his fee paid by the taxpayers, and who are they to expect anything like that?)  So, by the time Mr. Crofoot's trial was scheduled for the end of April, things looked bleak.

Fortunately, the American Council for the Blind stepped and sent an attorney to Mr. Crofoot to represent him.  All of the sudden, Bloemers folded and the City Attorney's Office signed an agreement dismissing all charges.  As for Spartan Stores, all Mr. Crofoot could say is that he signed an agreement to no longer publicly discuss the matter.  Therefore, we do not know what, if any, settlement has been reached between Spartan and him.  For what it's worth, I will say that a "gag order", like the one Mr. Crofoot spoke of, would indicate his lawyer got him a favorable settlement from Spartan.

So despite the mendacity of Spartan Stores, the thuggery of Warner Norcross, and the supine submission of the City Attorney's Office to the players in town, justice did prevail.  Mr. Crofoot is officially no longer a bad man.  We wish him well.

BLOTTO PRINCIPAL TEACHES STUDENTS TO NEVER TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Whatever happened to the "morals clause" in service and employment contracts?  How is it that a high school principal can get sloshed, climb behind the wheel of car, get arrested for drunken driving, then convicted for the same, and still keep his job?  Indeed, how is it that the man is perversely lauded for providing his students with a "teachable moment"?

What Jon Gregory, principal of Forest Hills Northern High School, taught his students this week is that a bad act may have consequences, but one of those consequences doesn't have to be taking personal responsibility for it.  The police may arrest you, the media may report what you did, and the judge may fine you or lock you up, but you certainly don't have to resign from your public office.  Others may have the power to make you account for what you did, but you don't have to make yourself pay for your malfeasance.

This is the substance of Gregory's "teachable moment" after he was arrested last November for drunken driving and pled guilty to it on Tuesday in Rockford District Court.  He has been hailed for his honesty in revealing his arrest to the Forest Hills school board last year and his impending trial to Northern's staff and students last Friday.  Well, I'm not sure how much virtue there is in being honest about a matter that is public knowledge.  I do know, however, that the integrity of making yourself personally accountable for your misdeeds is virtuous.  I do know that such integrity probably demands that you resign your office for violating an important public trust -- i.e., setting an example of character for our children -- because it is simply not enough to roll the dice on whether anyone else will hold you accountable.

The bottom line is that the students of Forest Hills Northern have learned this from Gregory:  Have no shame for your bad acts.  It is enough to be honest and declare mistakes were made, but let's not drag integrity into this mess.  If outside forces make you pay, sobeit.  But you don't have to make yourself pay.  Why should you?  If what you did wasn't too heinous, possibly no one will make you pay much for what you did.  So why make certain you will pay through your own actions?

We do not ask too much of a high school principal to have the shame to resign for drunken driving, especially when that dangerous behavior is one far too many high school students indulge in.  If Gregory hasn't either the decency or the commonsense to know that by holding onto to his office, he is clearly communicating to his charges that drunken driving really isn't that serious of a thing, then the Forest Hills school board should supply that decency and commonsense.  Unfortunately, while none of this is too much to ask, it is too much to expect these days of public servants.

IT'S THE TAXPAYERS, NOT THE VOTERS, WHO GOT SHAFTED BY MICHIGAN'S EARLY PRIMARY

Now that it looks like a re-do of the Michigan Democratic presidential primary is in the dustbin, it's time to sort through this mess.

There's been a lot of huffing and puffing over how the national Republican and (especially) Democratic parties "disenfranchised" Michigan presidential primary voters.  Of course, the state, not national, party organizations have themselves to blame.  The national organizations laid down the rules on scheduling primaries.  They permitted only a few states to hold primaries or caucuses ahead of "Super Tuesday" on February 5th.  They clearly warned the state organizations that holding an early primary would result in some or even all of the selected delegates not being seated at this summer's presidential conventions.

Nevertheless, Michigan Republicans and Democrats blundered forward with an early primary in plain violation of the national party rules -- and now are paying the price for it.  Because the Republican presidential nominee is a settled matter, no one on that side of the aisle cares anymore.  However, the Democrats still have a tight race for the nomination, and so Michigan delegates now might matter if they are seated.  Thus, the sound and fury during the past few weeks about the Democratic national party "disenfranchising" Michigan voters if either the national party doesn't seat the delegates chosen in the renegade primary or the voters don't get another primary to chose again.

The first big piece of clutter to clear out of the way is that voters have NO constitutional right to choose a political party's nominee for public office.  Political parties can pick their nominees any way they want, whether it's a primary, a caucus, a convention, or a smoke-filled room.  Whether or not it is savvy, reasonable, or fair for a political party to use one method instead of another is not the point.  The First Amendment freedom of association is.  So, the Republican and Democratic national parties can dictate any rules they deem fit for determining who their presidential nominees will be.  If they want to exercise control over the primary calendar (which, in light of how the Democratic contest is playing out, trying to prevent a front-loaded calendar seems not to have been such a bad idea), they can do so.

And if they want to penalize state parties that violate that schedule, they can do so.  It should be clear to everyone by now that this is a hard fact of life.  The courts have repeatedly refused to get into this mess, because they know they have no jurisdiction over the matter.  So why all the hullabaloo directed at the national parties?  Why aren't we thoroughly ticked off with the Michigan Republicans and Democrats who took our tax dollars to hold presidential primaries to chose delegates who would not be seated at the summer conventions?  They are the ones who took $10 million from taxpayer wallets to hold a meaningless event -- indeed, an event they knew was meaningless at the time.

In fact, why do the taxpayers even pay for political party contests in the first place?  How is it that we are obliged to subsidize the nomination process of the Republican and Democratic parties over which, by their First Amendment rights, we have no control?  Primaries might well be a good way for parties to select their nominees, but let them and not the taxpayers pay for it.  Meanwhile, keep in mind those state pols who blew your money on a pointless presidential primary the next time he or she is trolling for your vote.

G.R. COMMISSIONER WANTS CITIZEN WORK GANGS TO REPAIR POTHOLES

Yesterday the Grand Rapids City Politburo -- I mean, Commission -- met and discussed the potholes that are reducing our streets to rubble and our cars to wrecks.  There was the usual griping that city apparatchiks haven't confiscated enough of the bourgeoise's wealth to pay for capitalistic excesses like pothole repairs.  So, Second Ward Commissar David LaGrand proposed a corvee!  Yes, a corvee, labor exacted in lieu of taxes to build or repair highways.

I kid you not, folks.  WOOD TV-8 News reported that LaGrand recommended giving local residents a shovel and a bucket of tar to repair our potholed streets.  Nothing like a bit of old school workers' paradise to fix a problem that the government is too incompetent to remedy.  Heck, if the Soviets managed to bring in the harvest by hustling people out of their offices and factories into the countryside to do what the state collectives couldn't get done, why not give it a try in River City?

No doubt LaGrand would object that he was calling for volunteers.  Well, I'll go along with that so long as payment of city taxes is also voluntary.

LOCAL BOY HITS JACKPOT AT SINKING FIFTH THIRD

Kevin Kabat rose through the ranks of that venerable West Michigan institution, Old Kent Bank & Trust, and played a key role in suppressing a shareholder revolt when the big bank from Cincinnati, Fifth Third Bancorp, gobbled it up in April 2001.  Two years later, after Fifth Third reduced Old Kent to its Michigan subsidiary and then ousted its discredited mole, David Wagner, from the top spot there, Kabat took the reins of Fifth Third-Michigan.  Then last April, Kabat was rewarded for keeping the Fifth Third-Old Kent merger skeleton in the closet with promotion to chief executive officer of the entire bank.  So he packed his bags and moved to Cincinnati.

Now we learn from the Securities & Exchange Commission that after less than a year running the show at Fifth Third Bancorp, the board of directors paid him $10 million in 2007.  That includes a base salary of $866,534, perks and benefits totaling $140,400 such as $28,682 in country club dues, a $3,000,0000 performance bonus, and $6,000,000 in Fifth Third stock and options.  So Kabat bagged $10 million while his shareholders got what in 2007?  Well, Fifth Third's stock (ticker symbol: FITB) plummeted from a high of $43.32 a share in 2007 to $22.13 a share this morning.  That wiped out about $10 or $12 billion in shareholder value since Kabat took over.

Well, maybe Kabat deserved his big payday, because in a tough market, he had managed Fifth Third better than its competitors.  Sounds good.  However, there's the inconvenient fact that Fifth Third's performance ranking has been at or near the bottom of the top fifty largest banks in the U.S.  The big bank from Cincinnati continues to sink after the Federal Reserve put the kibosh on ex-CEO George Schaefer's running-on-water strategy designed to outpace the discovery of irregularities in Fifth Third's acquisitions of competitors, especially Old Kent.

And do not doubt that Kabat won a jackpot from the directors.  Even Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric did not make as much as Kabat.  GE's directors paid him only $9.1 million for running a company with a shareholder value thirty times the size of Fifth Third.  If Kabat had been paid accordingly, he would not have even earned half of his base salary.  It appears that our local boy is still collecting from grateful Fifth Third's directors for keeping shareholders in the dark about the crooked deals surrounding the Fifth Third-Old Kent merger, such as Toxic Towers.

THE STORY OF JACK CROFOOT

Jack Crofoot is a bad man.  So bad he needs to be locked up in the joint.  At least that's what Spartan Stores, their attorneys at Warner Norcross, the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office, and apparently even Mr. Crofoot's public defender want you to think.  What did this bad man do?

Mr. Crofoot was a regular patron of Spartan's Family Fare grocery store near the intersection of 44th Street and Breton.  One day he missed a couple of items in his grocery cart when he checked out.  Before leaving the store, he noticed one of them, a bottle of bleach, and then went back and paid for it.  Then immediately after exiting the store, he noticed the other item, a bottle of rum he purchased for a family member.  (Mr. Crofoot doesn't drink.)  As he headed back into the store to pay for that, the store's security guard detained him and refused to let him do so.

Mr. Crofoot missed the bleach and the rum at the check-out because they were out of sight in his cart, and you see, folks, he is legally blind.  However, the Spartan rent-a-cop scoffed at his blindness and demanded that he sign documents confessing to theft.  Mr. Crofoot refused, and the rent-a-cop called in the Grand Rapids police.  As it happens, the rent-a-cop was also a cadet with the GRPD, so he had an incentive to make it appear to his colleague in blue that he was making a good bust and not a screw-up.  As it also happens, this conflict of interest is the very reason why the City of Grand Rapids prohibits its police officers from moonlighting as security guards within the city limits.  (More on that below.)

So the Spartan rent-a-cop persuaded his brother officer to cite Mr. Crofoot for shoplifting.  Understandably, Mr. Crofoot was unhappy about this and had the gall to complain.  In fact, his complaint did get the attention of Spartan's manager for security who then reviewed the store's surveillance video of the incident.  He concluded that Mr. Crofoot had told the truth and committed no theft.  So the security manager contacted the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office to drop the charges.  However, Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers refused.

She was miffed that Mr. Crofoot had made a public complaint about the Spartan rent-a-cop's conflict of interest, which forced the GRPD to enforce the moonlighting regulations that its cadet had been violating.  So, Ms. Bloemers, who serves as the GRPD's legal adviser, decided to make an example out of Mr. Crofoot and show us slack-jawed yokels that we had better not get uppity when the cops make a mistake.  She pressed on with his prosecution in the city's district court.

Meanwhile, Spartan's security manager had been overridden by the grocery store chain's hired gun, Alex DeYonker of the law firm Warner Norcross & Judd.  Mr. Crofoot's public complaints about Spartan tarring his name with an unjust prosecution raised the prospect that he might have a meritorious lawsuit against the grocery store.  Thus, Mr. DeYonker decided to deter that prospect by bullying Mr. Crofoot into submission.  So instead of giving the man a simple apology and gesture of goodwill as the security manager had originally offered, Spartan's jackal -- ahem, Mr. DeYonker -- decided is was best to hold a suspension of the prosecution (rather than an outright dismissal of it) over Mr. Crofoot's head until he knuckled under to Spartan's settlement terms.

Mr. Crofoot didn't agree, because he wanted his name cleared.  So Spartan, Warner Norcross, and the City Attorney's office proceeded with his prosecution.  Living on a fixed income, Mr. Crofoot needed a public defender and the district court assigned one to him.  Unfortunately for him, his lawyer was one of those operators who collects his fee from the public defender's office and then does as little as he can get away with in exchange for it.  In fact, he told Mr. Crofoot that he would not enter a plea of "not guilty" on his behalf because it wasn't worth the trouble.  He claimed that he had already met with the judge who was determined to convict him.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Crofoot made a big stink about this:  He wanted his lawyer to defend him!  Finally, his lawyer relented and agree to enter a "not guilty" plea, but he would not do any work toward his defense -- for example, subpoenaing the store's video surveillance tape or the security manager and the store clerks to appear as witnesses.  Mr. Crofoot's lawyer explained that such case preparation would take too much trouble.

Of course, we can all marvel at the absurdity of this.  However, Mr. Crofoot faces the prospect of doing time, because everyone who should be putting things right by Mr. Crofoot has instead chosen to serve crass, rotten, venial interests that profit by his conviction, as unjust as that may be:

[1] The Spartan security guard vilified Mr. Crofoot to make himself look good to his superiors at the GRPD;

[2] Spartan and Warner Norcross have chosen to run a customer through a ruinious process to crush any prospect of a lawsuit for falsely detaining and defaming him as a thief;

[3] The City Attorney's office has put petty bureaucratic solidarity ahead of justice to smack down a citizen who rightly complained of a police officer's conflict of interest in the matter; and

[4] His public defender is peeved that his client should be so unruly as to demand that he actually defend him and so make him work for his fee.

Mr. Crofoot's real crime, folks, is that he had the temerity to complain when wronged.  He had the nerve to hold people accountable to the rules they claim to abide by.  He had the unmitigated gall to demand that his name be cleared by those tarring it.  Instead of fixing the problem, the Spartan security guard, Spartan Stores, Warner Norcross, the City Attorney's office, and his public defender chose to vindicate themselves at his expense -- which may end up including a jail sentence.  Their craven cowardice in refusing to admit a wrong to falsely justify themselves -- especially those who hold a public trust, like Assistant City Attorney Bloemers and Mr. Crofoot's public defender -- is despicable.

Such is the rule of petty bullies in River City and the supine go-along-to-get-along culture of our public officials, watchdogs, and local media that lets them get away with it.

G.R. PRESS BREAKS BIG STORY

In today's edition of the Grand Rapids Press, our newspaper of record broke the following big story on Page 3:

"If you can evenly divide the year by 4, it's a leap year.  We have leap years because the earth's rotation doesn't keep up with the calendar.  We lose a quarter of a day every year, so we add an extra day to the calendar every 4 years to make up for it.  Otherwise, eventually, summer would fall in winter."

I'll let you, dear readers, add the punchline to the joke that the Press has become.

BIG SISTER'S BIG SPOON ...

... to stir the racial pot with.

At least that's how Nick DeLeeuw of RightMichigan.com, our local pundit on Michigan politics, characterizes G.R. Mayor Heartwell's criticism of the city's new chief of police.  Nick got it right, even when he goes as far as to describe Big Sister's bloviating as "racist".  Heartwell is ticked off that City Manager Kurt Kimball chose the white guy instead of the black guy to serve as the next police chief.  Big Sister's reason is that Kimball blew an opportunity to restore racial harmony in River City by not making the politically correct pick for the top cop slot.  Well, I wasn't aware that the city was embroiled in racial strife, unless you count the race-mongering of the professional grievance industry.  I don't.

You see, folks, the lack of racial harmony in Grand Rapids is a phony and pernicious issue.  It is predicated upon the false primacy of race:  We are nothing but creatures of our skin color captive to the accidents of our birth.  Our individuality, the actual source of what unites and divides us, is obliterated in favor of collectivizing each of us into one arbitrarily designated tribe or another.  Our dignity, which wells up from the word written upon all of our hearts, disappears through this dark lens of racial politics which lets the race-mongers strip us of our humanity and force each of us into stereotypes of victim and victimizer that only a Great White Hope like Heartwell -- correction, Heart-less -- can transcend to bring peace to the community.

Meanwhile, all of our government officials have a great excuse for not doing their jobs.  Most recently we have seen this in public education:  Racial discord arising from deep-seated and institutionalized white bigotry against blacks and other minorities becomes the underlying reason why the Grand Rapids Public Schools fail to perform.  Racism is why black and brown students don't learn.  Of course, the real reason is broken families and bad parenting, which can be the ruin of any kid regardless of skin color.  But that's not a problem the government can fix and so take an ever-increasing bite out of our paychecks.  More telling, it leaves no ground upon which a sanctimonious moralizer like Heartwell can proclaim his progressive mutlicultural enlightenment in contrast to us benighted middle-class working-stiff bigots.

So our public servants stick to the racial discord storyline to the exclusion of the truth.  It gets them off the hook for their failures while providing a rationale to make even bigger claims upon our resources.  But it only works if we buy into the canard that our city is a festering pit of bigotry.  Moreover, to believe Heartwell's cant, we have to buy into the genuinely racist idea that whites will respect the law regardless of the skin color of the police chief but blacks will do so only if he is black.  Therefore, as Nick wrote, it is Heartwell who is the racist in playing racial politics over the city's new top cop.

Those of us who are sick and tired of the corrosive politics of race must call out Big Sister on this.

THE FOOL'S GOLD OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION

Today Guv Jen gives her sixth State of the State address.  One of the misbegotten notions she will be peddling is that getting more kids into college will help to reverse Michigan's economic decline.  To that end, according to the Grand Rapids Press, she will pitch a new $300 million taxpayer fund to replace "industrial-model" high schools with those offering study "relevant to the real world".  That relevance is essentially college prep, as explained by Governor Granholm's education advisor Chuck Wilbur:  "[She] believes that to diversify Michigan's economy and create jobs, we have to transform our schools so that every Michigan student can attend a high school that prepares them for success in college and in the workplace."

To say the least, that puts the cart before the horse when it comes to building new businesses.  Exactly how pushing more and more kids into college to get degrees for jobs that don't exist in Michigan, because the businesses that would provide those jobs don't exist in Michigan, will make those businesses suddenly appear in Michigan is not clear.  Granted, companies occasionally move into areas to take advantage of workforces that have characteristics well-suited to their requirements, but it is hardly the rule for the formation of new businesses.  And to the extent that it does happen, it is because that area has a well-established reputation for a particular type of workforce, which is acquired over a period of decades not a few years.

So Granholm's new education program isn't going to turn around the Michigan economy.  What it would do is exacerbate the trend of spreading out what students used to learn in twelve years over sixteen or more years now.  Plus it would further gut vocational training at the high school level, shoving it off to tuition-greedy colleges more than happy to sell degrees for what had been learned through apprenticeships and OJT, and then putting our public high schools at the service of colleges as student prep factories for them.

There is no argument that college is the right path for a genuine liberal education or for training in a true profession (e.g., medicine or the law).  However, a college degree is fool's gold for those looking for jobs in sales, teaching, journalism, business management, and the myriad of other careers that have become ersatz professions because colleges have successfully persuaded students, parents, and employers that a prospective employee is not qualified without that degree.  The end result is that most kids who get a college degree today have nothing but an expensive credential that lands them a job that any high school graduate could have gotten a generation ago -- WITHOUT the heavy burden of paying back a student loan.  On top of all this, college-level training teaches kids even less than what they used to learn through high school vocational classes, apprenticeships, and job experience.

We are faced with serious, fundamental problems in education today.  Huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are wasted to provide educrats with sinecures who in return have wrecked the education of our children at all levels.  An excellent study by the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy on how this has happened in higher education by the overselling of college is available here.  (Thanks to the Maverick Philosopher for posting on this interesting paper.)

MICHIGAN MOVIE MADNESS

Mitch Albom, the talented sports columnist and author, spoke before the Michigan State Senate on Tuesday to exhort our solons to get off the dime and double the special tax breaks the state is already handing out to filmmakers.  According to the Detroit Free Press, the celebrity columnist told the Senate Commerce & Tourism Committee, "This is a booming, growing business, [and] there is a simple way for us to get into it.  Incentives will do it."  Specifically, he advised the senate to increase the special tax cut for production companies filming in Michigan from 20% to 40%.

No doubt we can be sure that Albom knows of what he speaks.  He certainly must be drawing upon a well of expertise in government fiscal policy and the filmmaking industry.  Certainly our senators didn't invite him to testify and then eagerly promise him quick action just because Mitch is a native son who is now a bigshot celebrity.  Right?

The real issue that our lawmakers should be considering is not whether Michiganders should give filmmakers an even bigger subsidy, but why are we giving them any subsidy at all?  If excessive taxation is stifling the growth of the filmmaking industry in Michigan, then it's stifling the growth of business in general.  If cutting taxes for one industry makes sense to get more of it in Michigan, then cut taxes across the board to get all businesses booming in the Winter-Water-Wonderland.  Yes, taxes need to be cut, but not as special favors for some and nothing at all for most.

Besides, what great boon would filmmaking bring to Michigan?  How much wealth would it create in this state?  How many jobs would be added?  How many tax dollars would be put in the public coffers?  It would be one thing if Michigan became a new hub for the filmmaking industry, instead of merely accommodating itinerant production companies, but then tax breaks aren't going to drive that development.  The fundamentals of what that industry needs to thrive would.  Either it makes sound business sense to make movies and t.v. programs in Michigan or it doesn't -- and taxation and regulation are just one part of that calculus for filmmakers.

Like the bio-tech boondoogle, we shouldn't let the politicians bet our tax dollars on the latest fancy in economic development.  What we should demand of our politicians are policies that get the state and local governments out of the way of businessmen who want to grow businesses and industries that are naturally suited to the many advantages that Michigan offers.  (And those advantages are big ones, which is why our state has been able to carry such a heavy tax and regulatory burden -- but only for so long as the current economic distress demonstrates.)  We don't need them picking which businesses and industries do and do not get the largesse of our tax dollars, especially when they rely upon the advice of such "experts" as Mitch Albom.

THUMBS UP TO LOCAL BLOGGER

Let's give a round of applause to Nick DeLeeuw and his fine website www.RightMichigan.com.  Nick's coverage of the Michigan political scene in the run-up to yesterday's presidential primary was top notch, and even garnered the attention of the national punditry, including National Review Online.  Clearly, RightMichigan is becoming the go-to place in the blogosphere if you want the latest on the machinations of Michigan politicians.  Good work, Nick!

DEMOCRATS FOR MCCAIN

FYI, folks.  I received information this morning that a prominent Democrat was urging Michiganders to vote for Senator John McCain in yesterday's Republican presidential primary.  Campaigners on behalf of erstwhile presidential hopeful Joe Biden, the Democratic senator from Delaware, phoned local citizens late in the day asking them to vote for his aisle-crossing colleague McCain.  Whether Biden's eleventh-hour endorsement was a peculiarity limited to Michigan because of the meaninglessness of the Democratic presidential primary or heralds something more ala Joe Lieberman, I haven't any idea.  But it was an odd thing nevertheless.

RING IN THE NEW, SAY GOOD-BYE TO THE OLD

Happy New Year 2008 L.A.W. Readers;

We end one year and begin another.  2007 was a busy and interesting calendar cycle. We expect 2008 to be the same, if not more so. After all, we have a partial new city commission to keep our eye upon and it is a big Presidential election year as well.

Areas we’ll continue to keep in the bullseye zone:

Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell
Grand Rapids City Commission (especially the two new members)
Grand Rapids Public School System
City Services
Local and regional businesses
City, county and state politicians
Those crossing the line

Periodically, we’ll provide commentary outside these areas and spotlight important books, movies, magazines and other mediums that we feel warrant your attention. And as always, we'll continue to look forward to your comments, thoughts and suggestions along the way.

We wish each of our readers a happy, healthy and faith filled year ahead.

Regards,

Bridget Dupont-Tingley
Editor
The Local Area Watch

William Q. Tingley III
Executive Director
The Local Area Watch

PUBLIC MUSEUM NIXES CHRISTMAS AS WINTER HOLIDAY

Maybe it's about time for the taxpayers to put a lump of coal in the Grand Rapids Public Museum's Christmas stocking.

In a half-page full-color display in yesterday's Grand Rapids Press, the museum purported to educate us in the many ways in which West Michiganders celebrate "winter holidays".  The feature regaled us with the charms of Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and even that most ersatz of holidays (winter or otherwise), Kwanzaa.  It cajoled us to understand these celebrations of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Swedes, Chinese, and allegedly African-Americans as part of appreciating the diversity of our community.

I say "allegedly" regarding the celebration of Kwanzaa by African-Americans, because the only December holiday I have ever known black friends and colleagues to celebrate is Christmas.  Now that brings up something rather interesting about the museum's winter holiday piece in the Press.  Nowhere does it make even the slightest acknowledgment that Christmas also happens to be a wintertime holiday, and I daresay not a particularly obscure one.  In fact it is the most important holiday of the season for that one-third of the world's population who are Christians.  Ah, but then, you wouldn't know that Christians even exist by reading the museum's winter holiday feature.  Hindus, Sikhs, and Jews do abound (apparently even in River City), but not Christians who outnumber them combined, both here and throughout the world.

Then again the whole notion of confabulating all of these disparate celebrations as winter holidays is misbegotten.  I doubt that snowflakes and horse-drawn sleighs are images that Hindus commonly associate with their celebration of Diwali, as most of India enjoys a tropical clime.  Similarly with most celebrants of Chinese New Year.  Winter is merely incidental to Hanukkah, as well as Christmas.  Both are international holidays and celebrated with as much gusto where it is summer in December as where the snow blows that time of year.

Surely, the museum's managers are not so ignorant as to not know this.  Therefore, it is safe to conclude that their rationale for lumping all of these celebrations together in the Press as "winter holidays", to the pointed exclusion of Christmas, is to diminish the prominence of Christmas.  This is especially evident when one considers the very small fraction of area residents who celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and Kwanzaa.  Moreover, their true aim is further exposed in that, if the Press feature merely sought to highlight the diversity of local ethnic groups by way of the current season, then they had a host of national Christmas traditions available for inclusion in that piece.

As the prominence of Christmas is the consequence of a plain demographic fact -- i.e., the overwhelming majority of West Michiganders are Christians and for most of them the birth of Jesus is second only to His resurrection as a celebration of their faith -- and hardly anything nefarious, its diminishment is driven by a multiculturalist ideology rather than the pedagogical mission that is properly that of a public museum.  Even so, I would not recommend that Christians as Christians get too riled about this bit of politically correct obnoxiousness that the museum's managers put on display in the Press (a piece which, by the way, was sponsored by the Press).  After all, Christmas is still what it is regardless of their snub of it in their list of wintertime holidays.

However, taxpayers might want to give some thought as to whether or not their hard-earned dollars should support a public museum being used to disseminate propaganda instead of facts.

DESIGNING BUREAUCRATS

Just to be clear, I think the law of firm of Warner Norcross & Judd is a band of bandits.  So I'm shedding no tears for these shysters, having lost their grip on the city government after the departure of Boss Logie and now getting slammed by the Grand Rapids Planning Commission last week.

Nevertheless, I must say that the Planning Commission's denial of Warner Norcross's request for additional street level signage on the Fifth Third Building downtown was obnoxious.  It appears that certain members of that commission -- i.e., Shaula Johnston -- don't get what their public mandate is.  The Planning Commission has no authority to design what we build in River City.  They really don't even have the authority to plan it.  What they do have the authority to do is approve or deny projects based upon city ordinances.

For example, Warner Norcross asked the Planning Commission to approve erecting new signs with its name and logo at its main offices in the Fifth Third Building.  However, city ordinance limits the total amount a commercial signage permitted on a site, and the on-site signage for just Fifth Third Bank alone already excceeded that amount.  So Warner Norcross had to make the case that a special hardship existed that would make the application of the ordinance unjust and allow the Planning Commission to use its lawful discretion to exempt the law firm's signage from the ordinance.

Apparently the Planning Commission did not find a special hardship -- no doubt because Warner Norcross has been headquarted in the same building for four decades with no one having trouble finding the firm -- and denied the request.  So far, so good.  Whether or not the signage ordinance is good public policy, the Planning Commission has to make its decision based upon it.

That seems to elude Commissioner Johnston who was offended by the very fact that Warner Norcross had made this request.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, Johnston excoriated the law firm for proposing signs with its logo as "unclassy".  O, the horrors of a business wanting its logo on advertising!  Then the thoroughly estimable commissioner added, "I feel it's offensive that [Warner Norcross] think they're so special that they need something different."  Different?  Oh, that's right.  How odd that a business would want its sign on the building it's located in.

As for Warner Norcross thinking it's special, well, that IS the case a petitioner has to make when asking for an exemption from a city ordinance.  To be offended by that is to be offended by the very process of petitioning the Planning Commission.  One wonders how Johnston endures in her post with all those "offensive" petitioners submitting their "unclassy" designs to her.

EL DORADO, BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, AND THE GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT

Those of us not in straitjackets are fairly certain that lands of fabulous wealth free for the taking do not exist.  There is no El Dorado with streets paved of gold, no Big Rock Candy Mountain with cigarette trees and whiskey lakes, and no Shangri-la to ply us with every physical pleasure imaginable.  Also there is no Grand Rapids Public School District with money growing on trees to build grand palaces of secondary education to the tune of $165 million.

Alas, there is a very real Grand Rapids Public School District, one that is on verge of meltdown in terms of both finances and performance.  The near-bankruptcy of the GRPS is well-known.  Likewise, the poor student performance.  The latter was confirmed once again just this past week.  On the most recent standardized test for high schoolers, all four of the district's comprehensive high schools failed.  (Well, they all got the fig leaf that they hadn't actually failed yet but were only at the cliff's edge.)  The educrats complained that it was a new test so the kids weren't ready for it.  Translation:  School officials weren't given enough time to teach to the new test.  Of course, there is nothing new about readin', writin', and 'rithmetic, so if the GRPS had been sticking to the basics, no test old or new should be an issue.

Now comes a select committee to provide GRPS officials with a bevy of suggestions to improve the district's high schools.  Astonishingly they say it's not all that hard to do.  Just spend scores of millions of taxpayer dollars on renovations and new construction!  The committee wanted to consider a wide range of options, and so they did.  Their suggestions ranged from nicking the taxpayers for anywhere between $120 million and $165 million.  Unfortunately, the committee's plans for rebuilding the district's high schools didn't explain where the money would come from nor how new bricks-and-mortar would solve the endemic lack of discipline that is at the core of poor student performance.

Thus, we can only conclude that the committee knows something we don't know.  The Grand Rapids Public School District is an El Dorado where nothing but riches and pleasures can be found to eliminate any problem.  Indeed, according to the Grand Rapids Press, some GRPS officials actually said that the taxpayers would not have pick up the entire tab.  Well, why not buy into that fantasy?  Avoiding reality has been S.O.P. for the GRPS for quite awhile now, and those running the show haven't had any trouble getting their wallets fattened by the taxpayers in the process.

Unfortunately, the education of our children is a little too important to indulge in make-believe, no matter how much that has served city educrats so well over the past couple of decades.  So let's deal with an ugly truth.  Those running the Grand Rapids Public School District, starting with Superintendent Bernard Taylor, have given up on the kids currently in the system.  They do not want to do any of the heavy-lifting needed to help these students, so many of whom come from broken families and rotten neighborhoods, to learn the basics they need as adults to be responsible, productive, and self-reliant.  Instead they want to mask the poor performance of these students by drawing into the GRPS higher performing students from charter, parochial, and suburban schools who will by their numbers raise the district's average test scores and so make GRPS officials look better.

Hence the mantra of the select committee and GRPS officials to build a Shangri-la of educational facilities and programs that look and feel like the suburban school districts.  By some weird logic city educrats think pouring fresh concrete and slapping together specialty schools for the performing arts (but not plumbing, machining, and auto repair) will make parents overlook the deficient substance of education in the Grand Rapids Public School District.  Of course, GRPS officials have no excuse for not knowing that this doesn't work after the repeated failure of new buildings and speciality programs to pull in students currently attending non-district schools.  But then why should they let reality intrude so long as the taxpayers keep sending them paychecks and funding their pension plans?

BLOWING THE GREEN ON GREEN

To follow up on comments from readers B. Post and J.W.W. ...

Big Sister, a.k.a. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, is pleased as punch with himself.  For two years he has been stumping for the city government to participate in Consumers Energy's "Green Generation" program after personally committing to it for his personal residence.  On Tuesday evening the City Commission finally gave Heartwell the thumb's up at their biweekly meeting.  So now he has the authority to negotiate a "Green Generation" agreement with Consumers Energy to supply "green" electricity to the city's water and sewer facilities.

Well, what exactly is "green" electricity?  According to Consumers Energy, it's electricity generated by renewable energy sources based in Michigan.  That means local wind power and biomass -- i.e., bird-killing windmills and gas-belching compost heaps.  Oddly, it doesn't include efficient, clean, and readily renewable hydroelectric power, but then since when did "green" mean good sense?  Even so, at the end of the day, what's the big deal with the city government using electricity from politically correct power sources?

A couple of things.  First city taxpayers have to pay a premium for "green" electricity from Consumers Energy.  The extra tab for the next year will be over $166,0000.  With his typical mendacity, Heartwell claims that the taxpayers won't have to pay this bill, but of course they do.  The snake oil Heartwell is selling is that the "green" premium will be covered by savings from other conservation measures implemented by the water-and-sewer department.  Heaven forbid that the taxpayers should get a reduction in the sky-high rates they pay for city water instead.  No, the savings must be blown on one of Big Sister's pet projects.

Second, the city government is already using "green" electricity, just like all customers of Consumers Energy.  Participating in the "Green Generation" program doesn't mean that Consumers will be stringing special electrical transmission lines from a compost heap in Farmer Jones's back forty to the water-and-sewer department.  All of these renewable sources of electricity are plugged into the existing power distribution network.  Whatever the source -- green, mean, or anything in-between -- it all gets dumped into the same system and comes out as plain vanilla electricity.

So, dear readers, what it comes down to is that Big Sister is going to spend an extra $166,000 of your hard-earned dollars to get the EXACT same electricity that the city water-and-sewer department is already getting.  To be fair to Consumers Energy, it doesn't make the claim that paying a premium for your electricity gets you "green" electricity.  What that premium does is subsidize Consumers' capital expenditures for development of additional renewable energy facilities.  Of course, there is no guarantee by Consumers that much will come from this development other than the ultimate capacity of renewable sources to replace conventional ones is severely limited.

Just don't expect Big Sister to 'fess up to any of this as he makes yet another grab for your tax dollars to spend on his personal political agenda.

TAXPAYERS STUCK WITH THE TAB FOR DEVOS PLACE

Kent County is going to stick residents with the bill in 2008 for bond payments on the DeVos Place convention center in downtown Grand Rapids.  The county government issued two rounds of bonds totaling $93 million for the convention center with the promise that the payments would be covered by the county-wide hotel-motel tax.  That promise was made by touting a long-term trend of 7% in the annual growth in revenue collected by that tax.  But that was a bit disingenuous because, by the time the bonds were issued in 2001 and 2003, that growth had stopped and revenues were in decline.

Now the hotel-motel tax can't cover the convention center bill.  So instead of out-of-towners, presumably flocking here to go to events at DeVos Place, we locals get to pay for the bricks and mortar that promoters get to use to turn a profit.  So remind me.  Why was this convention center such a good deal for us working and living in River City?  I see why promotors like it.  They get to pay a discounted rental rate for DeVos Place.  The taxpayers, whether hotel guests or local residents, are subsidizing their events by paying for the place hosting them.  When do we get our cut of the action?

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS, PART TWO

Yesterday on Thanksgiving, the Grand Rapids Press published a letter from Dan Tietema, local businessman, former candidate for the Grand Rapids City Commission, and occasional contributor to L.A.W.  In a few paragraphs Dan did an excellent job of exposing Mayor George Heartwell for the political chameleon he is.  He will tell you whatever you need to hear to get elected, but once in office the leopard doesn't change his spots, however well he covers them during the campaign -- as we noted recently here.

Here is what Dan had to say:

In just a few short weeks after winning re-election, Mayor George Heartwell has strategically shifted his well-publicized, bipartisan, and pro-business approach to local government back to the partisan progressive liberal that he is accustomed to.

Already, he had advised fellow commissioners to draft a resolution to end the war in Iraq, urged state representatives to create new revenues, and called Eric Larson, head of the anti-tax group Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility, recall efforts "deplorable" and "self-serving".  The group opposes legislators who supported the newly added taxes placed on small business in a down economy.  Our mayor has also been supporting embryonic stem-cell research in Michigan.

The issues that need attention are plentiful and the mayor should stop wasting city resources promoting his personal agenda and spend more time addressing the areas that can improve the quality of life in our community.  Repairing damaged roads, fixing a broken budget, and restoring the necessary services is what an elected non-partisan mayor should be focused on when representing the fine citizens of Grand Rapids.

We deserve more than just campaign promises.  I urge those who endorsed the mayor's candidacy, including various religious leaders, prominent businessmen and women, and the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, to take a stand now and demand that the mayor redirect his priorities and begin concentrating on the interests that are specific to Grand Rapids.

Dan's got Big Sister's number.  Hizzoner indulges himself by using the mayoral office as a vanity vehicle for leftist posturing on national issues marginal or even irrelevant to the business of keeping River City a decent place to live and work in.  Thumb's up, Dan!

G.R. PLANNING COMMISSIONERS TURN TYRANT

At last Thursday's Grand Rapids Planning Commission meeting, Commissioner Shaula Johnston led the charge against the outlaws of Aquinas College who (shudder) wanted to build a new dormitory partly clad in vinyl siding.  According to the G.R. Press, Johnston found vinyl to be "offensive".  She declared that a building with it "doesn't look like an Aquinas dorm".  She wanted the entire exterior to be brick instead of partly so.  Then she chided Aquinas College for being "overly concerned" with construction costs.

Those bastards at Aquinas College!  Who do they think they are?  The law must be obeyed, and the law doesn't let property owners choose what materials they will build with.  You don't have that right.  That's the prerogative of Planning Commissioner Johnston and her colleagues.

Oh wait.  Actually, outside of a few special districts, the law doesn't say that.  The law doesn't care if Johnston thinks vinyl is offensive because it doesn't fit the look of other dormitories on the Aquinas campus.  (As though the drab mid-century architecture of those buildings is something to celebrate.)  It's not her call.  What is offensive is a petty bureaucrat like Johnston taking a petitioner to task over a concern for cost when she is not writing the check for the baubles she wants added to a project.

Even more offensive is that three other planning commissioners overstepped their authority to join Johnston in ordering Aquinas to use brick instead of vinyl regardless of the expense.  So remember, you may have title to your property, and you certainly have to pay the taxes on it, but with power-grabbing bureaucrats like Johnston and her ilk, don't think you actually own it.  Also remember, this is why city elections like last Tuesday's matter.  Who do you think appoints these tin pot dictators to the Planning Commission?