by Tim Skubick
July 3, 2009

Apparently somebody ripped “Solidarity Forever” out of the Michigan State Troopers’ union songbook, because when it came time for everyone to sing it, nobody could find the words.

Given a chance the other day to save the jobs of 104 of their brothers and sisters, the majority of state troopers took a hike and voted to save their own necks instead.

The union was asked to join other state government workers who are taking six days off without pay to help balance the state books. If the union had voted to do so, 104 newly assigned troopers would have kept their jobs. Now they are on the unemployment line.

This has been a messy saga from the get-go, with plenty of blame to go around.

It began when the state police hierarchy miscalculated. It was told to find $7 million in savings, but instead of going into other areas of the budget, the department went for the most visible recommendation of all, i.e. laying off troopers.

Apparently the thinking was it would never happen, as lawmakers would balk. Turns out they didn’t.

Some lawmakers tried to find alternatives to save those jobs.

But as each Plan B fell by the wayside, it came down to the union leadership — which wanted nothing to do with furlough days from the start.

The union was upset that the $7 million to save the jobs had gone into the Detroit crime lab after the City of Detroit cried uncle, claiming it could not afford to run the lab on its own. The state took over the DNA testing and there went the 7 mil for the 104 troopers.

There was an 11th hour effort by a GOP state senator to keep the troopers in their scout cars, but he was rebuffed by Senate GOP leader Mike Bishop, who refused to allow a vote on the alternative.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the union leadership did not want to make a unilateral decision to impose the time off for fear the membership would be angry. And with a union election set for next year, the leaders decided that rather than risk losing their cushy office union jobs, they would take the easy way out and poll the membership of 1,500 officers.

The popular wisdom was, when push came to shove, the membership would vote, albeit reluctantly, to save the jobs of their fellow officers.

But when they counted the votes, 55 percent said no to the furlough days and good-bye to their soon-to-be fellow men and women in blue.

The union issued some statement about not wanting to take time off because it would affect the crime rate. The statement said nothing about the appearance that greed might have trumped solidarity.

“Emotions were running high,” reports one source on the day officers turned in their uniforms, pistols and badges.

Taxpayers have a right to be emotional, too. Not only were they losing troopers, but the officers may also be scooped up by other states that are more than happy to hire them, now that Michigan has paid $7 million to train them.

The sorry thing here is, none of this had to happen, but nobody took the leadership role to make sure it didn’t. A pox on everyone.

Let the blame game begin.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972.

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ACLU Flunks Granholm
Everyone assumed when she took office that Jennifer Granholm would be the classical neo-liberal Democrat.

Ask the Michigan ACLU about that and you may be shocked at the response.

On civil liberty issues, “She’s not been a leader in anyway.”

Oh my.

That rather harsh analysis of the Granholm legacy comes from Kary Moss, who runs the American Civil Liberties Union around these parts.

She has watched this governor for seven years and concludes she has not led on emotional civil liberty issues such as gay marriage, affirmative action, bullying in schools and privacy rights because beneath that Granholm smile is a woman who “is afraid of controversy.”

Moss is not the only person in town to utter that observation. It is shared by many players in both parties. But they won’t say it in public as Moss did the other day on Public TV’s Off the Record broadcast.

Given a chance to lead on the affirmative action ballot proposal, the governor said she did not support a ban, but Moss says the governor then “stayed in the background.” And when she had the opportunity to “step forward in a bigger way” she stepped back instead.

The governor would of course disagree.

Moss is not surprised at any of this. Jennifer Granholm signaled even before she became state attorney general that her alliance with and allegiance to the ACLU was a thing of the past.

Before she ran for office, Granholm was an intern in the Detroit ACLU office and eventually gained a seat on the board of directors.

Then she turned in her card. Some figure she was afraid of being tagged as a “card carrying member of the ACLU.”

With no card, Republicans could not make the charge.

Maybe she turned it in because she was afraid of the controversy that might have cost her an election or two or three?

Regulating Cow Drivers
Leave it to the folks in California to start a controversy over the rights of farm animals.

You read that correctly, the rights of farm animals.

The Farm Sanctuary group, self-described as the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, put on the California statewide ballot a proposal to protect livestock from abuse.

The voters bought it, and now California regulates the size of cages in which animals are shipped, the temperature of the water cows can drink and all the chickens out there are now range-free.

Farm Sanctuary is now embroiled in a similar fight right in our own farm yard, and it’s plenty mad that right now “Big Agribusiness” is winning the fight.

In the House Agriculture Committee last week they took testimony on four bills that would regulate the abuse of farm animals, but the legislation does not go as far as the California stuff.

The animals rights group calls this a “blatant attempt” by industrial farmers to “evade meaningful change for Michigan farm animals.”

Committee Chair Rep. Mike Simpson (D-Jackson) says he favors legislation to “catch the bad actors who are treating animals inhumanely,” but the standards should be based on science and not on what Farm Sanctuary demands.

In the cryptic quote of the year, Simpson opines, “In Michigan we firmly believe that animals are part of the food chain. They should not have the right to drive a car.”

Religious Right Won’t Like This
Alex Gage is no slouch when it comes to political consulting. He cut his teeth here in Michigan doing the heavy research lifting for the noted Market Opinion Research firm in Detroit.

He’s now on the national stage with his TargetPoint Consulting Company, which helps GOP candidates find the right message for the right target group. He’s got some advice on how to reconnect the GOP with voters in the center of the political spectrum where elections are won.

The folks on the religious right in the GOP should now turn to the sports section, ’cause what follows from Mr. Gage, you will not find engaging.

In a confidential March memo, Gage writes that when center voters are asked to pick a word to describe the GOP, “religious right is the dominate term as to why the center does not like the Republican Party.”

And there’s more as he waxes on: “It is the left’s successful vilification of the term ‘religious right’ to imply intolerance and ignorance that is handicapping Republicans’ ability to reach voters in the center.”

So there you have it. Years of kowtowing to the religious right is backfiring on the GOP, although Gage is not nearly that blunt.

He writes that his party needs to find a way to reconnect with center voters by dropping the “abrasive or divisive” language when talking about socially conservative values. Heads up, Pat Robertson.

Compounding the problem for the GOP is the fact that the issues most popular with the center voters are not exactly tops on the Republican agenda, i.e. choice, stem cell research and “increased regulation on business with taxes to be raised on the rich.”

Mr. Gage better be careful. His “tell it like it is” analysis may not get him into the next GOP confab.