The Enterprise

For the second time in a week, students at Harrison High School in Farmington Hills got out of the building - at least it was cold and rainy - while officials searched for a bomb. Threatening messages in bathrooms can’t be taken lightly any more, and students know this. They know this, because Estralee Michaelson, the district’s safety guru, said so in last week’s Farmington Observer article.

Still, all Harrison activities and events went on as scheduled after the building was cleared, according to this week’s Observer article. So here’s a thought. How about we start creating a little peer pressure by cancelling all school activities on and around the day of the threat? Because you know and I know that a fairly large number of Harrison High School students know who’s writing on the bathroom walls. And they know threats will be taken seriously only if someone is convicted of a crime.

That’s why it makes sense to me to deal with the culture, rather than waiting for one student to come forward and confess. One bomb threat is a kid problem. Two is a school problem.

–Joni Hubred-Golden
Michigan Woman Blogger

Paul Welday’s Facebook page (I am an equal opportunity Facebook friend) today says he is “walking door-to-door winning hearts and minds everywhere he goes. It helps to take dog biscuits.” Maybe Debbie Schlussel doesn’t have a dog. Or maybe she doesn’t live in the 37th District - her mega-bio at debbieschlussel.com (check it out, some things simply defy brief explanation) doesn’t say where she lives. It does say, however, that Paul Welday has ties to Arab terrorist activity and Medicaid fraud, which sound like serious charges until you start reading.

A little perspective is in order. Ms. Schlussel - a conservative columnist who once went undercover as an observant Muslim woman to look for terrorist activity at the Islamic Center of America - says she has known Mr. Welday for more than 20 years. This is a woman so obsessed with stopping him, that when she heard Mr. Welday was considering a run for office, she bought up paulwelday.com, paulwelday.org and paulwelday.net, each of which will take you to a column she wrote about him in 2004. She ties him up with a thread that runs through comments he made while speaking on behalf of the Bush administration at a 2004 event, through Mr. Welday’s years as Congressman Joe Knollenberg’s chief of staff and, mostly, through Ms. Schlussel’s beliefs about certain organizations and individuals, which Mr. Welday does not share. She also pointed to a case involving Oakwood Hospital, where Mr. Welday’s brother is CFO. Oakwood was once investigated for Medicaid fraud over allegations the hospital helped Muslim women without U.S. citizenship have their babies at taxpayer expense. The government charged no one, and of course, Schlussel attributes this to Welday’s running interference through his work as a lobbyist. In fact, pretty much all of the tying Schlussel does has to do with Welday’s work as a lobbyist.

Schlussel’s action alert concludes with an unpaid endorsement of Welday’s primary opponent, Richard Lerner.

Which brings me to my next post…

(Seems appropriate at this point in the conversation to point out that I’m neither endorsing nor supporting anybody in this primary, I’m just sharing information.)

On the same day that I received a note about Paul Welday’s alleged ties to all things sinister, another e-mail came in from Richard Lerner, who had some questions about a last-minute addition to the Republican primary, one Mike Peters. Mr. Peters’ campaign filing shows that he’s been granted a reporting waiver, which I also qualified for when I ran for city council several years ago. It just means you don’t intend to spend nearly enough money to actually win the election - judging that solely by my own experience, of course.

Does seem a bit odd to file for a waiver in a contested primary, but political idealism takes many forms. It’s possible that Mr. Peters is a man with a mission, who intends to take the promise of a commitment to fiscal repsonsibility more personally than others.

Or…

He could be a kind of straw-man. An associate of Mr. Lerner’s believes that to be true and provides some interesting political insights in the process. While it might seem self-defeating, this politically savvy person says putting up a third candidate is sometimes done by the campaign of someone who sees himself as a front-runner. The idea is to draw support away from the third candidate and to have the straw candidate pull all the negative cards, so the presumptive favorite gets to stay “above the fray.”

How’s THAT for political intrigue?

Now, here’s what I think all this means. I think it means that voters have to work hard to hold candidates responsible for running positive, issues-oriented campaigns. I think it means those candidates who sincerely believe in their ability to provide the kind of leadership so sorely needed in Lansing will have to work hard to stick to those issues.

And I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens next…

I worked in journalism for 20 years. Every newspaper I know, past and present, has had a policy requiring individuals who submit letters, even those who wrote on behalf of an organization, to include at least one representative name for publication. The privilege of anonymity was reserved for crime victims or others who could reasonably demonstrate they had reason to fear being harmed, and even then, the content of the letter had to be compelling.

Apparently, the Gazette has no such rule. In the May issue, which hit stands this week, a group calling itself “Citizens Against Unnecessary Spending Excesses (CAUSE, get it?) Farmington and Farmington Hills published a scurrilous, cowardly and wholly false attack on Farmington city officials. These folks aren’t the CAUSE of anything but part of the inertia that has plagued Farmington for years.

Take, for instance, the claim that Farmington leaders are saying the streetscape project will not cost taxpayers. That is a blatant distortion of what city officials have said about this project all along - it will be dovetailed with another bond issue that is expiring, to minimize the financial impact. Sadly, these purveyors of disinformation have twisted words to support their opposition to progress.

The letter writers bring in the Pavilion and Civic Theatre project (yes, apparently those of us who enjoy our $3.50 flicks are exploiting an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars), but clearly their focus centers around tanking the streetscape. They claim this project - planned over a period of more than three years, drafted with intense participation by community volunteers, made the subject of several public meetings and evaluated by planning professionals - amounts to nothing but a “spending whim” and “impulse spending.” As if their disapproval of the project makes the community effort that brought it forward meaningless.

The most outrageous comment came at the end, when these pitifully misguided citizens repeated malicious, gossipy rumors that accuse public officials of illegal acts. And amazingly, they have been allowed to do this without identifying themselves and without a shred of proof.

Here’s my guess: These same folks will walk smiling into church on Sunday morning feel oh, so self-righteous. They’ll continue to shamelessly back-bite fellow citizens who have given up their personal lives, given up time, energy and effort to step up and serve their community in leadership and volunteer positions. And they won’t see a thing wrong with what they’re doing.

Shame on them, and shame on the Gazette for allowing them to hide behind a bogus “organization” that exists nowhere but in the fact that its members lack the courage to stand behind their beliefs.

–Joni Hubred-Golden
Michigan Woman Blogger