Renew for the Zoo

Original here.
Today is the regular primary election day in Michigan, so I'm going to give my opinion on the millage renewal for the Detroit Zoo.  Deadline Detroit summarized the local media opinion of the millage with 4 Unanimous Editorials: Vote Yes Tuesday to Renew Detroit Zoo Support.

There's nothing divisive or partisan about animals. Even L. Brooks Patterson and Mark Hackel don't try to obstruct the Detroit Zoo's tax support, which four publications endorse...

That's a reference to the two County Executives obstructing a millage proposal for a regional transit plan, which I mentioned in Clawson 4th of July Parade.  I'll have more about that later.  Back to Deadline Detroit.

Wayne, Oakland and Macomb ballots Tuesday have a proposed renewal of a .1-mill property tax from 2018-28 for the popular attraction at Woodward and I-96.

The millage, which brings in more than $11 million annually, costs $10 a year for a home worth $200,000.

The 10-year renewal is is widely expected to pass, based on strong support in 2008 and on 2015 polling by the zoo...

Deadline Detroit then quotes editorials from the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Crain's Detroit Business, and Downtown Birmingham/Bloomfield supporting the millage.  I can add a fifth from Daily Detroit as well as mine.  Vote yes.  I know I will.

And now, MLive shows one of the great projects that the Detroit Zoo has completed, the new Polk Penguin Conservation Center.

Inside the largest penguin facility in the world, Detroit Zoo's new Polk Penguin Conservation Center.

Enjoy the penguins and stay tuned for more elections coverage after the polls close.

Detroit Water Project helps pay delinquent water bills

More good news on top of the city suspending water shutoffs--there is now a site that connects people who need help paying their water bills with people willing to donate money.  WXYZ has the story in Website allows donors to pay delinquent bills.


To read more, Deadline Detroit has the story at Person to Person: Here's How to Help Detroiters With Unpaid Water Bills.  The site itself is here.

Examiner.com article on Debbie Dingell’s candidacy

I concluded Examiner.com article on Dingell retirement by telling my readers to stay tuned, as “I’m planning on writing an article on the likely candidates to succeed Dingell tomorrow.”  I’ve written it. Here’s the excerpt.

Debbie Dingell, wife of U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), will likely announce her candidacy for her husband’s seat. Here she is at the luncheon where Dingell announced his retirement.
Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Debbie Dingell to announce candidacy for retiring husband’s seat Friday

This afternoon, the Washington Post reported that Debbie Dingell, wife of retiring U.S. Representative John Dingell, plans to announce her candidacy for her husband’s seat in Congress Friday.  The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, and Ann Arbor News followed up with articles containing details confirming the Post’s report.

Mrs. Dingell would be running for the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, which includes Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and surrounding areas of eastern Washtenaw County along with portions of southern and western Wayne County.  Should she win the seat, she’d be the third Dingell to represent Michigan in Congress, as both her husband and her husband’s late father served in the U.S. House of Representatives with the senior Dingell having first been elected in 1933.

Dingell’s announcement has been expected.  The Detroit Free Press had published yesterday that she would be interested in running for her husband's seat, a move her husband appears to support.  He told the Free Press, “if my wife runs, the lovely Deborah, I will vote for her.”

More at the link, including a Daily Best interview of Debbie Dingell and more on her background and qualifications, along with the likely Democratic challengers.  For some reason, I haven’t been able to find the names of any Republican candidates, although I’m sure there will be at least one.

Speaking of challengers, the most serious potential Democratic rival to Debbie Dingell is Rebekah Warren of Ann Arbor.  Over in the comments section of the Deadline Detroit article on Mrs. Dingell’s potential candidacy, I mentioned that in a conversation with a couple of disgruntled readers.  Follow over the jump for how the back and forth played out.

Real corn pone fascists among us in Michigan

I embarked on the project of matching up links to items on my desktop and in my files to conversations with The Archdruid because I got a little overwhelmed after posting The Archdruid on Fascism, part 1.  After having dealt with my “I can’t be all DOOM all the time” mood, it’s time to close the circle and deal with articles about Neo-Nazis here in Michigan.

First, Deadline Detroit presents Meet The Neo-Nazi Down The Street: Eastpointe Resident Jeff Schoep.

To be the "largest neo-Nazi group in the United States" is kind of dubious distinction. After all, what does it mean really? That you have a few dozen mouth-breathers on your mailing list?

And it's not like these things ever end well. A couple years ago, a neo-Nazi leader in California was killed by his own 10-year-old son. Frank Collin, the "Illinois Nazi" who wanted to march in Skokie, turned out to be a pedophile. Also, these dummies want to be Nazis. That's just always bad.

It turns out the largest neo-Nazi organization in the U.S. is based in Detroit and run by an Eastpointe resident named Jeff Schoep.

Deadline Detroit then links to WXYZ’s Nazis Next Door: Michigan is home to largest Neo-Nazi group in U.S.

The National Socialist Movement is the largest Neo-Nazi group in the United States.They display swastikas in their rallies and marches. The NSM lists its headquarters as a P.O. Box inside a post office on Detroit’s East Side.
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The NSM may be the biggest Neo-Nazi group in Michigan, but it’s not the only one.

The American Nazi Party is headquartered in the all-American city of Westland.
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Researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center say hate groups across the country are on the rise.  In 2000, they counted 600 groups.  In 2012, that number had grown to 1007.

Michigan has 25 known hate groups, and experts say our state has long history with the extreme right.  During the 1920’s Detroit had more than 60,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan.

That’s not all.  Crooks and Liars brings its readers the tale of James Laffrey and His Call to Assassinate Jews.

James Laffrey has not been publicly advocating ethnic hatred for very long. He does not appear to have many, if any, followers. He is not particularly well-connected to more established entities on the anti-Semitic far right. But what he does have is a website and plans to create a white supremacist political party called Whites Will Win.

Laffrey, a middle-aged man who appears to be based in Michigan, has caught people’s attention with the bloodcurdling nature of his agenda: he openly calls for the assassination of Jewish people by their white neighbors.

Ugh.  There’s only one piece of good news.

Laffrey has generated little attention outside the white supremacist realm, but he has drawn notice within it. However, a number of his fellow white supremacists have indicated they resent his entry into anti-Semitic organizing without having established himself first in the community. Laffrey appears to have little following, with only slight web traffic, and no financial support.

This man may not self-identify as a Neo-Nazi or fascist, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and especially quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.  If he’s a goose instead, then I have another conversation to associate him with, one about Satanism.  On that note, here’s what I have to say to all these people: Go to Hell!  In the case of Laffrey, I have one other thing to say: Seek help.  A lot of the people commenting at Crooks and Liars think you’re ill.

As for the rest of us, be warned.  The reason that Kunstler, Greer, Crooks and Liars, Deadline Detroit, and WXYZ warn us about “corn pone Nazis,” the return of fascism, and Neo-Nazis who are our neighbors is that people like these can become a real threat, however pathetic they seem now.

A Detroit funny from Wonkette and Deadline Detroit

At the end of last week’s Derp Roundup: Your Weekly Waltz Through A Wonderland of Weird, Doktor Zoom included this bit of old but funny piece of performance art that happened this summer in downtown Detroit.

And finally, this make-of-it-what-you-will story of a beautiful prank in Detroit. It happened last summer after the city declared bankruptcy, but at Derp Roundup, we feel no obligation to deprive you of stuff just because someone sent a tip long after something happened (on the other hand, please don’t do that). See, Detroit has this big statue commemorating Joe Louis, and it’s a mighty fist:


Context? Who needs Context?
Well, OK, maybe a little context? Fist First off, it’s not a photoshop; the artist “Jerry Vile” installed the can of Crisco as a comment on the inevitable pain that the bankruptcy would cause the city. Sadly, it was removed as “abandoned property” by 2:00 of the afternoon he dropped it off. Some people got no sense of humor.

The full original story is at Deadline Detroit and includes this gem.


I should read Deadline Detroit more often.

Fingers pointed while state counts Detroit's disputed votes

I concluded Student sustainability video festival 12: Bed Bugs on 'The Simpsons' with "Crazy Eddie's Motie News now resumes its regular programming, whatever that is."  Since the last entry that wasn't part of the video festival was Detroit's version of hanging chads, I'm returning to the topic of Detroit's disputed 18,000 write-in votes for Mike Duggan.  WXYZ has a comprehensive update in The latest on Detroit's Mayoral election mess.

7 Action News looks at the latest in the mess surrounding the Detroit Mayoral Election.

The good news is that those votes will not be summarily thrown out; the state will tabulate the disputed ballots.  The bad news is that the video reinforces my opinion that the poll workers were poorly trained.  The ugly news seems to be this election in general and this controversy in particular has exposed a rift between the Wayne County Clerk and the Detroit City Clerk.  The County Clerk openly favors Benny Napoleon and her ruling on the disputed ballots favors him, while the City Clerk's tabulation favored Mike Duggan.  In fact, she has ruled in Duggan's favor in all of the previous disputes over his being on the ballot.  This has led Tom Barrow to accuse her of favoritism.

“An incredible amount of money has been expended by all sides during this legal battle, all of which was unnecessary and should have been avoided had the Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey upheld her oath of office and not favored one office-seeker over others who were not allowed onto the ballot based on the same Charter violation,” Barrow said in a statement calling for her resignation.

I think the quote attributed to Stalin is appropriate here.

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."

Pass the popcorn.

Detroit's urban agriculture ordinance and controversy over Hantz Woodlands

First, the good news from the Detroit Free Press.

Detroit's urban agriculture plans move forward

The Detroit City Planning Commission approved the city’s new urban agriculture zoning ordinance Thursday evening. The action takes the city closer to officially recognizing the city’s multitude of community gardens and encouraging new and larger urban farms.
...
Roughly four years in the making, the ordinance is expected to pass council easily, just as the commission approved it unanimously.

Kunstler should like this.  At least one city is trying to transition to a future where more people are involved in growing food, which is what he predicts.  On the other hand, Detroit should be careful.  As I've written before and am now telling my students, the solutions we develop here for our problems will be exported, even the bad ones.

Speaking of which...

The passage of the zoning ordinance does not settle the controversy over whether the City of Detroit should sell large volumes of tax-foreclosed vacant lots to large-scale farming efforts such as the proposed Hantz Farms tree-growing business. City Council is expected to take up the Hantz proposal again Tuesday.

Speaking of that controversy, WXYZ has a video report on that, as well.

Residents gathered to protest the potential sale of land near Indian Village to a Detroit company

This stikes me to be more about loss of local control than about the actual use of the land as a tree farm.  For that, one has to read the comments to an article by Jeff Wattrick of Deadline Detroit and Wonkette, who asks How Is John Hantz Different Than Dan Gilbert?

Really, what’s the difference between Gilbert’s strategy of purchasing downtown office buildings on the cheap and filling them with his employees and John Hantz’s plan to purchase city-owned vacant land for an agricultural venture?

Well, there is one difference. The majority of Gilbert’s purchases have been privately owned, partially occupied buildings that were already generating at least some property tax dollars for the city. Hantz is proposing to purchase barren, city-owned land, thus returning those parcels to the property tax rolls.
...
Given the choice between Hantz "grabbing" city-owned land so he can clean it up and develop tax-generating tree farms and the status quo—land as a city-owned liability with its own kind of “urban farm,” the kind that periodically sprouts old tires and discarded bags of Cheeto’s Flaming Hot, I’ll take the Hantz land grab every day of the week and twice on this Tuesday.

The fears of Hantz’s secret plans—he might build a factory!—are akin to 9/11 conspiracy theories and those Maine voter fraud allegations. Perhaps Detroit’s grape-throwing class hasn’t yet heard the news, but we’re living in a post-industrial economy. Rich white people don’t build factories anymore, not in the United States.

Hells bells, if John Hantz wanted to build a factory or condos or whatever, he’d probably just say so. If that were the case, the same people currently questioning his motives would throw him a parade.

The proposed Hantz purchase may raise a legitimate question about why one wealthy entrepreneur’s purchase offer rates so much attention when countless residents and small businesses have trouble purchasing neighborhood vacant lots from the city.

That’s valid, but denying Hantz doesn’t move us closer to a reality where the city—currently Detroit’s largest landholder—sells lots to tax-paying residents and businesses, for community gardens or pocket parks or even the occasional in-fill house, without a hassle.

Arguably, the Hantz sale might set a precedent whereby the city finally loosens its grip on its inventory of vacant and fallow land. Something it desperately needs to do.

At the least, the deal means Detroit will have 143 fewer acres available for illegal dumping.

That's the pro-Hantz view.  In the comments, Pro Detroit makes the anti-Hantz case by suggesting that Hantz is after the "Agricultural land tax exemption and Federal farming grants."  That at least makes sense to me, even business sense.  As for what else he calls Hantz, well, that might just be true, but I'm not going to repeat it here.  It also doesn't quite answer Wattrick's question.

As for my take, I think we're seeing the mirror image of the hysteria over Julie Bass.  I haven't talked to Julie in a while.  Maybe I should ask her what she thinks of this.