Here, the Detroit News reports on yesterday's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn the ruling by Judge Lawson to suspend enforcement of Proposal 2 for university admissions cycles. Julie Peterson, the U-Michigan spin agent, points out the university "closed down" over the holidays (then why the rush for a "deal" by the 20th - the irony of such a response is sweet) and that "no admissions decisions" will be made until the U fully analyzes what its response will be (again, ironically, presumably this full analysis will be possible in a matter a days or a week now, despite the whining that it couldn't do it before).

Here's the very tight and wonderful decision by the Court of Appeals, which is now precedent, and says much about key issues that will be fully litigated later by BAMN, the ACLU, and the NAACP. Someone somewhere in those organizations will have to come up with some brilliant new idea to win those issues or squeeze through the reasoning here. But we already knew these arguments were bad.

HAPPY NEW YEAR. ZR will see you sometime after U-Michigan wins the one battle we'd normally be hoping them to win - the Rose Bowl.

Affirmative action and preferences is not just about the issue, its about free speech. If you take the wrong position, you will be publicly demonized. Here, Joel McNally really goes overboard in this invective ad hominem against Ward Connerly that, unbelievably, the editors of the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, allowed. Connerly spoke to Wisconsin legislators earlier this month during a debate over preference policies there.

Inviting Ward Connerly to speak to a special Wisconsin legislative committee studying affirmative action is like inviting the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to address a hearing on race relations.

That a respectable paper would allow this to go into a regular column is disgusting. But it gets nastier, and the logic goes down hill. McNally calls Connerly a "huckster", and writes he favors affirmative action "for whites":

It's not really accurate to call Connerly an opponent of affirmative action. He's actually a vociferous advocate in favor of affirmative action for white people.

Of course, at best, eliminating race preferences is affirmative action for no one (or for those based on socio-economic needs), but none of that matters.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin is not a petition state, otherwise I suspect McNally would have more opportunities to engage in this drivel over the next few years.

You can send McNally an e-mail at jmcnally@wi.rr.com.

According to this story in the Hattiesburg American (hat tip to Tom Wood's CASNET list), we need to monitor Congress closely for the next two years at least to avoid potential Congressional action to roll-back MCRI's progress.

Civil rights advocates also may urge Congress to take a stand on affirmative action, depending on the outcome of several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Advocates are concerned about the potential national implications of a Michigan initiative approved in November that would ban racial preferences in state hiring and university admissions.

"We will be looking to see if there is any role for Congress to play," Britton said.

The battle is never-ending and on many fronts!

What role could they play? Perhaps a "federal requirement" for preferences, although it seems remote and would subject the pro-preference forces to legal challenges from several angles. Even many Democrats won't want to pay the political consequences of such an odious and bold move, so I suspect it's more Britton's tall-talk than anything, but we should prepare for and monitor the possibility.

Lansing State Journal columnist, and host of his own PBS Lansing-insider show Off-the-Record, Tim Skubic, has always been an insightful collector of interesting facts and statements. Here he reports on the coming tax-reform debate that is necessitated by a $1.8 billion reduction in the SBT revenue stream and a newly found deficit of an additional $1 billion. Most of the column addresses different responses to how necessary replacement is, and how much can be cut in spending, with no real answers. But Skubic always adds a bit of interest:

After almost nine years of covering her, you sometimes feel you have heard it all, but the other day the governor revealed that she has "rhinoceros skin" and being a lame duck is "liberating." Both comments were a first.

There's just too many animal references in those syllogisms. But look for a possible special election in 2007 giving the voters a choice on tax alternatives, and politicians room to "duck" for cover. This will be one of the big issues of the year.

The University of Michigan's Press Office diligently pushes out news of almost every significant publication and finding of its researchers. That news releases system is part of the business of getting federal research money. And some of the research can be quite good (indeed, probably most, its the bad that corrupts and it doesn't take alot to damage the process).

Whether this research here is good or not is not a question I'm skilled to judge without spending significant time researching, but it does present some fascinating results.

The study is by the Institute for Social Research (ISR), one of U-M most prominent sub-schools and research divisions. Daniel Kruger is the researcher. He proposes that men and women prejudge men based on physical cues related to the "masculinity" of their facial looks.

Together, the studies show that highly masculine faces are associated with riskier and more competitive behavior, higher mating effort and lower parenting effort in comparison with less masculine faces.

"Both men and women generally respond to men with high and low facial masculinity in ways that could be expected to benefit their own reproductive success," Kruger said. "While the more masculine-looking men may be good bets for mating, the more feminine-looking men may be better bets as parenting partners. More feminine features suggest compassion and kindness, indicating that men are able and willing to invest in a long-term relationship and in any potential children."

That conclusion has many, many implications. Not the least of which deal with gender relationships, prejudice and reasons for discrimination, and whether such instinctive justifications to discriminate are appropriate, etc. It cuts to the core of the diversity and choice issue, particularly dealing with gender relations, and it doesn't necessarily fit easily within the University's current dogma.

This press release is worth looking at.

In the previous entry, I comment on the misuse of President Ford's support of affirmative action and his recent passing by a company that makes profit solely by promoting affirmative action. Of course, it's a company, so surprise might be waning.

And I was certainly wasn't surprised to see this blog entry by the Michigan Review on its new blog citing University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman's statement about what was most important about Gerald Ford. Here she is going over the cliff:

“In recent years and perhaps most importantly, President Ford was outspoken in his support for our diversity programs through our defense of affirmative action to the Supreme Court.”

"...perhaps most importantly..."

So the only, or at least most important, criteria upon which the U-M President judges its own accomplished alumna is whether or not they defend diversity? It's shocking and disgusting when a for-profit company uses a man's death to advance their agenda, but the order of magnitude when the president of my university does it is far worse. Then again, perhaps I'm forgetting that U-Michigan is really more like a for-profit institution (despite its legal status as a non-profit and public university).

So much for the Artes portion of that 3 pronged motto.

You'd think that greatest of all equalizers - death - would leave some room for not being defined on some issues. But according to my google alerts which reach "DiversityInc.com", a sickening industrialization of the diversity business that I refuse to pay to read but have occasionally monitored, the story of President Ford's demise is lead with this:

Affirmative-Action Supporter President Gerald Ford Dies at 93
DiversityInc.com (subscription) - USA
... president never elected. But did you know he was a strong supporter of affirmative action in the University of Michigan case? When Ford ...

What a gross-miscontextualization of Ford's life. Sure, unlike Reagan, he had a weakness on this issue (and a few others), but his life's role in history was defined by the timing of his entrance and the fact that he could hold the nation together following Watergate. To focus, even lead, on "Affirmative-action supporter," is to reduce history to a meaningless bean-counting on specific issues. Of course, preferences is a bean-counting industry.

It's also a sickening use of a political figure and death to advance one's personal cause. I had intentionally neglected until now to blog on Ford's death and the archival research I have indicating that he used his VIP status as former-President to lobby for individuals' admissions into U-M because I simply didn't think they were relevant to his death (nor very unusual among the living), or his life's accomplishments, and it was the wrong time to highlight them. Ford's significance lies elsewhere, and may he rest in peace while others attempt to revise and rewrite his role.

The linked PDF file is the Statement of Organization of the final known committee to pop-up on October 27, 2006 in opposition to Proposal 2.

You can probably guess the direction a group calling itself "Vote No on Prop. 2: Sponsored by Feminist Majority Foundation."

I could care less because they had a First Amendment right to throw their money down that pie-hole, but I note for all those astro-turf worrying liberals that despise even a drop of out-of-state money, that these guys and gals (or maybe just gals) hail from Beverly Hills, California.

It's only $4000, and a bit surprising that they actually filed, but its always worth noting and following the money.

Here, Paul Egan of the Detroit News, updates us on the disposition of the intervention requests. Apparently, MCRI and ACRI filed motions to intervene recently, and Judge Lawson granted Russell and TAFM's motion, but denied MCRI and ACRI.

It is certainly an interesting result which I will comment further on after analysis.

UPDATE: In addition, Lawson rejected the City of Lansing's bid to enter the fare. This appears to be the classic "split the baby" or tit-for-tat arrangement - by denying MCRI/ACRI and Lansing entry he has upset both sides. By keeping Russell in, he preserves a plaintiff with a bona fide individual interest, and the issue of the agreement is still on the table.

Shauna Rhone writes this Christmas day an op-ed likening "the disease called color-blindness" to a diamond without facets. Here piec, titled, "Affirmative action in our nation a threatened jewel", appeared in the local Madison, Wisconsin paper, the Capital Times.

Every now and then one of these pieces catches your attention. The piece is filled with an unusual combination of pessimistic "facts" and strange philosophy. For example, the assertion:

Now other countries are eclipsing all the legendary advantages previously attached to the American Dream.

Last I checked, America still had a vast immigration problem, and almost no one leaving for those other grasses on that side of the hill. Is Ms. Rhone booking her flight and requesting citizenship in these countries?

She assigns to "affirmative action" a super-human status as:

The one legal structure designed to restore the health and sustenance of the country's ability to be the greatest country in the world is now endangered.

Wow. "The one..." The only? That's impressive - and there are so many evidentiary foundations lacking in that statement that I wouldn't know where to begin.

Her sense of history is quite distorted, but I'll let you read that for itself.

One thing to say about Rhone. She writes in a prose rare for even the most ardent supporters of preference:

Citizens who see race as a detriment rather than an enhancement to the fabric of the country seek to eliminate it legally in an attempt to implement the impossible disease called color-blindness. This condition, which distorts the vision of a unified America, is like looking at a diamond without facets. It's difficult to fully appreciate the beauty of a diamond without celebrating the facets that bring out its true brilliance.

Sounds great, but of course it misrepresents us (we don't see race as a detriment and don't seek to eliminate it [race preference, but not race itself] legally) in a fundamental way. And even "color-blindness" (and hence the diamond) is a distortion - one can see and appreciate color, that is the facets, without preferring any particular facet over the others. Color-neutrality has always been a better description anyway as it avoids the syllogy that the label color-blindness lays upon us.

As reported below, Citizens for Michigan purports to be a moderate group advocating for a Constitutional Ccnvention and 63 changes to the Constitution. Here are their explicit recommendations.

In their most significant change, they advocate to 1) abolish the Constitutional initiative entirely, or 2) make it practically impossible by requiring two successive yes votes, and erecting other signature collection barriers including increasing the numerical signature threshold.

Why? In this vein, they point out Stop Overspending (SOS) signature effort - which failed because the system allegedly WORKED in catching bad signatures - received 99.9% of its money from out-of-state (forget that they have a First Amendment right to participate). They also cite Michigan as having the "second lowest" signature threshold, here

As a further incentive to outside experimenters, Michigan has the second lowest threshold for signatures in the United States.

This is slightly different from former-U-Michigan Regent and king elite Phil Power's quotation of their report, attributing to John Axe the claim that Michigan was the "easiest" state "by far" in the nation. Such an "easiest" claim is open to interpretation since "easy" is vague and could depend not just on one factor like signature threshold, but other less tangible ones. It's different, but it's also more precise, giving us an opportunity to more precisely evaluate the intellectual quality of C4M's claims.

Does Michigan have the "second lowest threshold for signatures in the United States"? The single definitive source on this would be the Initiative and Referendum Institute (IRI), respected on both sides for compiling solid IR information, although it is a clear advocate of initiative laws from both sides of the aisle (that is, they recognize the double-edged sword nature of petitions, and accept that as part of the democratic process).

Well, it turns out this claims is quickly rendered false upon examination of the PDF table of all requirements. There are two types of requirements - one a percentage based on the number of votes for a top-level statewide office (most use the Governor, a couple use the Sec. of State, I combine them since either results in roughly the same starting total) and those that base the starting number on registered voters (which produces a much higher threshold - roughly 2.5 times - because of low voter turnouts, and which are on average smaller percentages, making them comparable to the gubernatorial systems when all is said and done).

Is Michigan the second lowest?

There are 5 states, roughly 1/3rd of all allowing such drives, that use 10% of top-statewide office votes from previous election. Michigan is among them.
There is one state that uses 3%, one that uses 5%, and four states using 8% (including "presidential vote counts"). Even among the best possible interpretation of these numbers, Michigan would be the 4th lowest (using a method of ranking that discards "duplicate" ties), and if counted with ties it would be tied for 7th lowest. Put in context it's tied with 7th lowest out of 16 states, in a five-way tie that takes up 7th through 11th place, out of 16 places, which puts it dead nuts inside the "median".

Of the 12th-16th place rankings, one uses 12% of the Governor's votes and two use 15%. Apples to apples they are the hardest. Probably harder still are the two states using 10% of registered voters, which is usually going to produce more than a system using 15% of actual votes. And probably identical to the vast middle's use of 10% is the one state using 4% of registered voters, but its hard to compared easily.

Regardless, C4M's claim is flatly untrue. The researcher would have had to have "missed" the 3% and 5% state, and in calling us the "second lowest" threshold they lumped together 9 states among 14 others. Clearly Michigan was in the median. That's manipulating statistics to come up with a factoid pre-disposed toward your position.

See my update to my post about former U-Michigan Regent Phil Power's puppet organization, Citizens for Michigan. In that post, and another post I wrote about how Phil Power, now director of the organization he likes to portray as "centrist" called Center for Michigan, was using his weekly op-ed in local newspapers to advocate for 63 changes to the Michigan Constitution, include a change to make it harder for the people to make changes (and thereby undo any mistakes that the self-illuminating Power might have made in his 62 other changes). Power cites John Axe as an authority on the "easiest" states in the nation, here:

Of all our nation's major states, Michigan is "by far" the easiest in which to propose constitutional amendments, according to John Axe, who chairs Citizens for Michigan and teaches law at Wayne State University.

Either Professor Axe and "Citizens for Michigan" are incapable of quality research at the level of a google search, or Power, who runs the remarkably similarly-named "Center for Michigan", misquoted Axe! Here is a copy of Zarko Research's challenge to Power/Axe:

UPDATE: Is Michigan the "easiest" state "by far" in the union to pass an amendment? Here's a low-hanging fruit. According to the I&R Institute, California is the leader:

In the last decade, Californians lead the nation in numerous reform efforts utilizing the initiative process including term limits, ending bilingual education, adopting animal protection laws, ending racial preferences, and adopting one of the most comprehensive drug reform measures in the country. This has lead to elected officials across the country vilifying the initiative process and have used the rhetoric “we don’t want to be like California” as their rallying cry in opposing the initiative process. They are concerned that the reforms adopted in California would come to their states – even though these are the reforms wanted by the people. However, Californians still overwhelmingly support the initiative process and have no desire for it to be abolished.

And a review of this wonderful PDF table of all states percentages debunks Citizens for Michigan's complaint that Michigan's 10% (of votes for Governor) requirement for Constitutional initiatives is the lowest around. California is 8%. Massachusettes is 3%. North Dakota is 4% (of population, which by customary voter turnout is similar to 10% of Gubernatorial votes), Colorado is 8% of votes for Sec. State (similar to Gov. vote), and most states are the same 10% Michigan uses, with only a couple at 12 or 15%.

Citizens for Michigan's "research" is thereby proven to really, really stink. And it comes from a Wayne State University law professor.

Dawson Bell reports here in the Detroit Free Press about the impending battle over what appears may be a $3 billion dollar budget shortfall for the State of Michigan. Governor Granholm evaded the central question whether she was proposing a tax increase, but all pointers are that she's ready to do that because she can't imagine how "health care, education" and other "critical" state services could be cut further and we need to "balance" our tax increases and budget cuts.

Playing cat and mouse, Granholm offered this retort:

At the same time, she avoided answering questions about whether she is prepared to call for a tax increase to address the state's budget deficit, which she said could be in the range of $3 billion.

"I'm not giving you a headline to write," she said. "I'm preparing people for the fact that this is going to be significantly challenging."

Challenging yes. But I can quickly and specifically identify over $1 billion in non-education non-essential cuts and I don't have easy access to the details that the Governor and legislature have.

And using the often-fatal reasoning of a recently re-elected politician, she seems to have badly misinterpreted what this election meant and that it was somehow a "mandate" against smaller government. In perhaps one of the most shocking statements I've seen a governor make:

Granholm declined to outline her preference but repeatedly emphasized the value of investing in education, health care and other government services in creating a better future. She also said she believes voters rejected an economic policy based on tax cuts and smaller government when they returned her to office by an overwhelming margin.

While there is value to "investing" in education and health care, that doesn't mean voters "rejected" "an economic policy based on tax cuts and smaller government."

Go ahead Governor. Go down this path. The Republicans will hopefully clean up their message, focus, and we'll see you with a different House in 2008 and a different party in your office in 2010. The voters rejected DeVos locally because he lacked an economic policy - not one based on tax cuts and smaller government (or at least he lacked the ability to communicate the policy with enough substance to mean anything). The national picture was pretty similar - Republicans strayed from smaller-government conservativism. Let's get a vision and get BACK to smaller-government conservativism, and we'll get back to where we need to be in offices that matter soon enough.
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Merry Christmas to all my readers.

I touched on it below in reference to former Regent Phil Power's op-ed on restricting Constitutional changes by petition, but the ultimate source for that recommendation is a dangerous group claiming to represent the "center" (hmm, just like Phil's Center for Michigan!) and claiming to know what would make the "document" (Michigan's Constitution) "better" for Michigan.

They have sixty-three recommendations. Here's their top-recommendation, put in front of the other 62:

Accordingly [because of the problem of out-of-state money], the group recommends either the removal of the provision allowing constitutional changes to be proposed by petition or, if they are permitted in the future, that no such proposal be placed on the ballot until a substantially larger number of signatures are obtained nor adopted until it is ratified at two successive general elections.

In addition, we have identified 62 suggested other changes in the constitution which we believe would make it a better document for Michigan. Other major policy changes we suggest are:

Now that's irony. First, you think that constitutional changes are just simply too "easy" and then you propose 62 OTHER changes after you make it harder (only for the people, of course - those who know what is "better" still have access).

ZR can report though first-hand knowledge that the movement to make petitioning more difficult will receive support (and opposition) that crosses the political spectrum. Both sides have been stung hard by citizen-drives (and both sides benefitted, suggesting it might actually be a reasonable system!) and there will be surprising alliances in this coming battle.

There is a huge battle brewing in this general area.

UPDATE: Is Michigan the "easiest" state "by far" in the union to pass an amendment? Here's a low-hanging fruit. According to the I&R Institute, California is the leader:

In the last decade, Californians lead the nation in numerous reform efforts utilizing the initiative process including term limits, ending bilingual education, adopting animal protection laws, ending racial preferences, and adopting one of the most comprehensive drug reform measures in the country. This has lead to elected officials across the country vilifying the initiative process and have used the rhetoric “we don’t want to be like California” as their rallying cry in opposing the initiative process. They are concerned that the reforms adopted in California would come to their states – even though these are the reforms wanted by the people. However, Californians still overwhelmingly support the initiative process and have no desire for it to be abolished.

And a review of this wonderful PDF table of all states percentages debunks Citizens for Michigan's complaint that Michigan's 10% (of votes for Governor) requirement for Constitutional initiatives is the lowest around. California is 8%. Massachusettes is 3%. North Dakota is 4% (of population, which by customary voter turnout is similar to 10% of Gubernatorial votes), Colorado is 8% of votes for Sec. State (similar to Gov. vote), and most states are the same 10% Michigan uses, with only a couple at 12 or 15%.

Citizens for Michigan's "research" is thereby proven to really, really stink. And it comes from a Wayne State University law professor.

Here, the Center for Individual Rights has a detailed set of links to its very recent entry into the BAMN et al v. Granholm et al lawsuits and cross-motions to delay enforcement of Proposal 2.

At the time ZR originally concluded that an AG deal would be acceptable and a positive strategy, CIR was not in the picture. U-M had filed its brief on December 11, and CIR did not file to intervene until December 18, and only today did the full extent of CIR's representation become known (on Dec. 18, it was only known that TAFM had hired CIR, and not that an individual applying to Law School was a co-plaintiff).

These events force a re-examination of the correct process here. With a real intervening-plaintiff involved now, CIR has made a formiddable argument that this person, Eric Russell, has a right to findings of fact that an actual federal legal interest would be implicated that would allow requiring overturning the Michigan Constitutional process of implementation after 45 days. Simply stated, the Court should not been able to accept a bargaining away of the rights of an individual entitled to intervene in the case. Since the court ruling transpired on December 19 and the CIR filings were the day before, it would be interesting to know how aware the court was of the development (as with the City of Lansing's motion). Prior to CIR's involvement, the AG and others were free to represent the people generically in the way they determined generally carried out their duties (it should be noted that the AG was the only party following the court's ruling to have consented to an expedited hearing for Russell/CIR's emergency motion, although not to any specific outcome). A close examination of the CIR briefs however reveals that the only way Russell should be denied access to the process mandated by MCRI is if U-Michigan can demonstrate concretely that it would violate a federal rule. I'm not convinced that it can't do that, as I've described, but Russell is entitled to his day in court. Individual rights should always triumph, and when a real individual asserts them they are entitled to full due process.