Here's a highlight reel just for this blog in 2007. Note that most of the highlights for our work beginning in August shift to our sister sites, Oakland Politics and Outside Lansing.

2007 Highlights

January 2007 – Differential responses by two cities (Grand Rapids and Lansing) to FOIA relating to Proposal 2 (MCRI) enforcement uncovers e-mail from affirmative action officer encouraging her fellow public employees to send form letters of protest to County Commission, among a variety of other defiant actions.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=539&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

February 2007 – First Documented Violation of Proposal 2 reported through information obtained through combination of inside source and FOIA.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=586&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

March 2007 –
Testified at Michigan Civil Rights Commission “hearing” announcing new report about Proposal 2 compliance, caught Commission in contradiction with political claims from 2006 and in way it treated another citizen at the hearing. Quoted extensively in Lansing’s insider political journal MIRS, and hit AP wire with quote on Commission “flip-flop”.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=596&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 &
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=595&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Interviewed Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich regarding SPLC’s “hate group” categorization of the student group “Young Americans for Freedom” at Michigan State University. Beirich terminated the phone interview after realizing she had contradicted herself and later falsely accused me of leaving threatening phone messages which had coincidentally been left with SPLC at that time (we challenged SPLC to publish or prosecute, and offered our cooperation with any federal investigation).
The multi-report thread:
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?s=beirich

April 2007 – Exclusive Statistical Analysis showing Proposal 2 impact on Governor’s race. http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=662&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Holding PBS accountable for biased TV. http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=656&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Quoted by AP on McCain Speech. http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=652&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

May 2007 – Michigan Education Association strikes pre-emptively in “reverse FOIA” to stop PP & M FOIA request.
Detroit News editorializes on issue in favor of disclosure and against MEA.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=697&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
The complete and long thread where PP & M publishes e-mail obtained before the suit (still pending as of December 2007, National Right to Work Foundation has joined as representation of PP & M) demonstrating union leaders misused teaching time and e-mail accounts for political activity.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?cat=102

June 2007
Most of original work focuses on defending against the Howell MEA “reverse FOIA” lawsuit, and privately helping attorneys brief the case.

July 2007
Published FOIA results and original statistical analysis of all 40,000 U-Michigan employees salaries, and how salaries have grown over past 6 years despite claims of budget crunch. Work received considerable behind-the-scenes praise, and a few subtle public uses.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=733&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
MSU analysis:
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=730&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

August 2007
City of St. Louis caught in its own words in violation of 14th Amendment.
http://chetlyzarko.com/b2evolution/index.php?p=756&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Zarko Research enjoyed 2007.

It was a year in which the Michigan Education Association (MEA) sued (May 8) to stop us from using FOIA to uncover misuse of taxpayer-funded resources by union leaders in the Howell Public School system during a collective-bargaining battle. Nothing wrong with aggressive bargaining - just don't use public resources to tip the hand in your favor. The Detroit News opined in our favor here.

Since that litigation began, Zarko Research has properly joined the matter. The story related to the Howell e-mail FOIA lawsuit spawned this whole category here, and has already resulted in a limited production of e-mails.

In July, this blog again set trends in publishing the salary databases, with serious statistical analysis of employee growth rates and salary increases, of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. The data debunked the notion that higher-education tuition increases were a result of lack of legislative appropriate or "cuts" by the legislature. The increases are explained by grotesque growth rates in bureaucracy and administration at all universities - where competition is either perverse or non-existent. Here is The U-Michigan analysis and the
MSU analysis.

Finally, in August and September, Zarko Research spawned new blogs, with the idea of increasing the penetration and prominence of our publishing business to more niches, locally and statewide. This blog remains intended for the issues we've focused on in the past, and for a "hodgepodge" of other miscellaneous issues not easily fit into the boxes of "OutsideLansing.com" and "OaklandPolitics.com".

OutsideLansing has broke significant original news, including the filing of a campaign finance complaint against billionaire Jon Stryker in November, and FOIA'd e-mail from Central Michigan University on the Dennis Lennox case cited by Dawson Bell in the Detroit Free Press just this month. OaklandPolitics tapped into the presidential election news cycle, breaking the story of Paul Garfield's termination from the Ron Paul campaign, covering Duncan Hunter's speech here in Pontiac with original video, and covering a number of other issues.

And the force is with both blogs as the statewide columnist Jack Lessenberry has equated Zarko Research to "Zark-Vader".

Of course, there are a thousand little threads leftover I haven't mentioned, and several of them will wind their way into 2008, but look forward to more of the same and some curveballs. Full speed ahead.