Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Oh (mostly) Happy Day!

Governor Jennifer Granholm (a.k.a. “My Best Friend, Jenny”) has been reelected, maintaining not only a democratic leadership of this state, but also allowing Michigan to keep it’s B rating on the Political Participation index of women reflected in the “Status of Women in Michigan” report written by the Nokomis foundation and in Institute for Women’s Policy Research of Washington D.C. Not only does Gov. Granholm maintain a democratic sense of how the state should be run, but she maintains a powerful voice for women in the state of Michigan.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California has been nominated to become the first female speaker of the house. For those of you who haven’t watched your School House Rock recently, that means that she is third in line for the presidency should (heaven forbid) anything unfortunate happen to the president and the vice president (such as, say, another hunting accident).

Donald Rumsfeld has resigned. The PEOPLE have spoken…and the PEOPLE have decided that they have been lied-to in the most heinous way regarding the conflict in Iraq (FYI: it is not a war. It only becomes a war when the congress issues a Declaration of War, something that has not happened, by the way, since WWII.). Now if we can only get Cheney to stop pocketing money (via Haliburton) for the recovery effort, and get the services to the people of Iraq as we were supposed to have been. After all, they have poorer infrastructure now (worse roads, fewer hours of electricity, less usable water) than they did when we invaded with our weapons of mass distortion. (I guess we should have listened to the UN inspectors after all…)

The Dems have taken control of the House and (last I heard) possibly the senate. THANK GOD. Now, maybe, we can start fixing the problems with things like education and social programs.

Voters in Michigan are, apparently, schizophrenic. It’s the only thing I can figure to explain why we would elect almost all Dems to both the state and federal governing bodies and then screw up SO ROYALLY with our proposals. Proposal 2??? It could mean that I might just kiss my job goodbye. (That’s right, folks, it could result in a loss of funding for women’s agencies like mine.) And Proposal 5? How could we NOT choose to maintain school funding with inflation? Either we are a state of whacked-out and uninformed democratic voters OR the moderates and the more liberal of the Republicans are so phenomenally pissed out the situation in Iraq that they really, REALLY wanted to send a message. In any case, I do have to admit that I hang my head in a little bit of shame for living in a state that sees no benefit in helping women and people of color rise above the institutionalized hindrances to their success. It may be a Democratic club, but it’s still an old boy’s club after all. And one last thing: the only reason Proposal 2 even made the ballot was because of voter fraud. The entire campaign was a monumentally dishonest sham. And I quote: “he Michigan Civil Rights Commission, the governmental body charged with investigating civil rights violations in the state of Michigan, recently concluded an investigation of MCRI in which they found that MCRI had committed widespread and systematic racially-targeted fraud in their petition campaign to secure ballot access.” Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Now if we could just DO something about the ridiculous gay marriage ban...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I carried petitions for MCRI. I donated my own money to the campaign for the years leading up to this election, while every dirty trick was employed to prevent this from coming to a vote. Tactics including the physical intimidation used at the commsionners meeting in Lansing where public school buses were used to bus Detroit students on a school day to help shout it down and disrupt proceedings.

Every opponent that has spoken out about this proposal has failed to answer one simple question. Can you answer it?

What is wrong with equal protection under the law?

Anonymous said...

I believe you were misinformed on Proposal 5. It did NOT guarantee SCHOOl funding in line with inflation. It guaranteed teacher salary and pension in line with inflation. And if we guarantee it, where is the money coming from? If you read Devos or Granholm's platform they both promised to allow for more of the intended school funds to get to the classrooms. Right now only 56% gets to the classroom, the lowest in the nation. Proposal 5 would have NOT promised the money would go to the classroom. If the money would be spent where it is supposed to be spent there would be no need for a proposal 5.