Tag: Michigan

The Slow Death Of Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency giving favor to one party or class. The term is named after Elbridge Gerry, who as Governor of Massachusetts in 1812 signed a bill that created a contorted-shaped partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological …

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2018 Elections: Aftermath of Tuesday Primaries and Special Election

Update 23:45: The Ohio 12 special election results have changes and the gap between the two candidates has narrowed to 1564 votes. From the Cincinnati Enquirer, this is what to expect: 1,564: Balderson’s margin of victory in the unofficial, final results Tuesday 3,435: The number of provisional ballots to be counted. These include people who …

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About That Recount

Jill Stein is not off her rocker with pushing for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and, today, in Michigan. Here is one of the prime reasons: Brandon Hall of the Michigan Trump campaign was just convicted of 10 of 10 counts of election fraud. https://t.co/KUJV4qNAiv — Susan J. Demas (@sjdemas) November 30, 2016 It took less …

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EEOC files first ever lawsuits against companies for discriminating against transgender employees.

R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes of Garden City, Michigan and Lakeland Eye Clinic of Lakeland, Florida have been found to have much in common by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

 photo Amiee-Stephens-x400_zps650425d2.jpgIn 2013 Aimee Stephens, an embalmer and Funeral Director told her boss at Harris that she was transitioning from male to female.  Two weeks after that the owner of the funeral home chain fired here…telling her that what she proposed to do was “unacceptable.”

In 2011 Brandi Branson was fired from her job as director of hearing services at Lakeland Eye Clinic after informing her employer that she was transitioning to female and beginning to wear makeup and women’s tailored clothing.

Branson observed that co-workers snickered, rolled their eyes and withdrew from social interactions with her.

EEOC says the companies violated federal law by discriminating based on gender stereotypes. and has filed suit against them.

New study calls for improved medical care for transgender patients

Daphna Stroumsa, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, has published research on medical discrimination against transgender people whichis available in the American Journal of Public Health:  The State of Transgender Health Care:  Policy, Law and Medical Frameworks.  Access to the full document requires APHA membership or paid subscription, which I do not have.

Abstract:

I review the current status of transgender people’s access to health care in the United States and analyze federal policies regarding health care services for transgender people and the limitations thereof.  I suggest a preliminary outline to enhance health care services and recommend the formulation of explicit federal policies regarding the provision of health care services to transgender people in accordance with recently issued medical care guidelines, allocation of research funding, education of health care workers, and implementation of existing nondiscrimination policies.  Current policies denying medical coverage for sex reassignment surgery contradict standards of medical care and must be amended.

Dr. Strousma is a graduate of The Hebrew University Haddassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel.  She calls for the medical establishment to immediately address of the situation.

Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up: Annie Clemenc and the Italian Hall Massacre by JayRaye

Annie Takes Up Her Flag

Ana K Clemenc

Ana K Clemenc

On July 23, 1913, 9,000 copper miners of the Keweenaw laid down their tools and walked off the job. The were led by the great Western Federation of Miners, and they had voted by a good majority for a strike: 9,000 out of 13,000 The main issue were hours, the miners wanted an eight hour day, wages, and safety. The miners hated the new one-man drill which they called the “widow-maker.” They claimed this drill made an already dangerous job more dangerous.

The mining companies had steadfastly refused to recognize the Western Federation of Miners in anyway. They would continue to refuse all efforts at negotiation or arbitration, even those plans for arbitration which did not include the union, and this despite the best efforts of Governor Ferris, and the U. S. Department of Labor. James MacNaughton, general manger of Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, famously stated that grass would grow in the streets and that he would teach the miners to eat potato parings before he would negotiate in any way with the striking miners.

The Keweenaw Peninsula was a cold, windy place, jutting out into Lake Superior from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This area was known as the Copper Country of Michigan and included Calumet Township of Houghton County, with the twin towns of Hancock and Houghton ten miles to the south. Calumet Township included the villages of Red Jacket and Laurium.

It was here in Red Jacket, on the third day of the strike that Annie Clemenc, miner’s daughter and miner’s wife took up a massive America flag and led an early morning parade of 400 striking miners and their families. Annie Clemenc was six feet tall, and some claimed she was taller than that by two inches. The flag she carried was so massive that it required a staff two inches thick and ten feet tall. The miners and their supporters marched out of the Italian Hall and through the streets of the Red Jacket to the Blue Jacket and Yellow Jacket mines. They marched silently, without a band, lined up three and four abreast. These early morning marches, with Annie and her flag in the lead, were to become a feature of the strike.

“The West Wing” Returns

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Don’t get excited. “The West Wing” hasn’t really returned but the cast did get together to make a campaign video for cast member, Mary ” Kate Harper” McCormack‘s sister, Bridget Mary McCormack who is running for State Supreme Court Judge in Michigan. The video also has a voting education lesson in it about filling out the non-partisan section of the voting ballot. This is how Michigan and 14 other states choose their supreme court justices. If you think that these races aren’t important, remember that this week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that returned that state’s controversial voter ID law (pdf) back to the Commonwealth Court for review.

Bridget Mary McCormack is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who also serves as Michigan Law School’s associate dean of clinical affairs. From her wikipedia bio, she is the founder and co-director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic, the first exclusively non-DNA innocence clinic in the country. Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed the woman who reunited the “West Wing” on his show “The Last Word.”

— Insert Candidate Name Here —

Check out Front Group American Future Fund’s MO — their Cookie Cutter Ad formula to Buy an Election:

Get flashy graphic, and a menacing announcer;

Cut and Paste inthe Name of the Candidate, your backers dislike and have paid to replace!

Don’t Fact Check anything — make your Opponents waste their Time and Money trying to combat your baseless accusation. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It helps when the Same Cookie-cutter format can be used over and over again, all across the nation.  That makes their “special” money — go even further, as clearly displayed next:

Corporate Donations Buying U.S. ElectionsCountdown — Keith Olbermann



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Transgender Teen Robbed of Homecoming King Title

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Stop Ivan Nikolov’s Deportation

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

In May, my mother and I were picked up in an immigration raid in our home. I was told that in 2002, when I was just 12, I missed a court date at which I was ordered removed from this country. I’ve been in detention for three months, now, awaiting my deportation.  My mother was deported on Friday, August 6th, and I’m set to be deported any day now.

Unemployment Rates for Ohio and Other States, and Tips for How You Can Help

In January, the Associated Press reported that Ohio’s unemployment rate stood at 10.9% as of December 2009.  That rate has fallen slightly in the six months or so since that news article, standing now at 10.7% according to the Dayton Daily News.

The number of unemployed workers in May dropped to 641,000 from 652,000 in April. During the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has gone up by 22,000 from 619,000. The May 2009 unemployment rate was 10.3 percent.

Anyone looking to call this an improvement needs to explain that thinking, because these are more than likely seasonal jobs that either have disappeared or will disappear.

For my home town of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is even worse: 17.1 percent according to Simply Cleveland.  (In the interests of fuller disclosure, I have been unemployed since at least December of 2007, existing on financial aid and what food I can get from food pantries.)

Cleveland has an unemployment rate of 17.1%, compared the national average of 6.9%.

According to our Cleveland Trends data, the number of Cleveland, Ohio jobs has decreased by 28% since November 2008.

Graph Showing Employment Decline

‘Tea Party’ Now Owns the Hutaree Militia Group, “you betcha’ ” {UpDated}

And apparently claiming rights to any and all militia groups in the U.S., as it hadn’t been reported at first which group the Authorities were searching for the members of.

Yesterday morning, as word started coming out about the FBI and Homeland Security raids in lower Michigan, Indiana and Ohio as to Militia Groups in that area, now understood it’s some end of time christian? militia, this site link was top of the list in a google search for more news on the raids. The ‘Tea Party Patriots’ website on a chat page. They took ownership of the why the FBI raids, the militia groups members being sought!!

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