--L.A. Times col. 1, 'OBAMA LAWYERS WEIGH ARIZONA OPTIONS,' by Richard A. Serrano and Peter Nicholas: 'A team of top government lawyers has quietly begun studying legal strategies for the Obama administration to mount a challenge to Arizona's new illegal immigration law, including the filing of a federal lawsuit against the state or joining a suit brought by others ... Attorneys from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security are examining legal options and hope to make suggestions by mid-May, before the Arizona law takes effect sometime in midsummer ... Grounds for a possible U.S. challenge could include charges that the Arizona measure unlawfully preempts the federal government's role in securing the country's borders ... Or federal officials could file a civil rights challenge asserting that the law encourages racial profiling.'
--ASSIGNMENT EDITORS: 'The Los Angeles Police are preparing for as many as 100,000 marchers to rally for immigration rights in downtown Los Angeles during the annual May Day event Saturday.' --L.A. Times
Friday, April 30, 2010
Immigration Update:
Duncan Hunter: Deport Illegal Immigrants' Children Who Are Natural-Born Americans
Lawmakers still seeking retirement plan deal | lansingstatejournal.com | Lansing State Journal
Michigan governor candidates debate 'urban agenda' | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Granholm to sign bills today on 'Oprah' banning texting while driving | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Immigration
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
GVSU promises to immediately cut tuition 5 percent if lawmakers guarantee minimum funding | - MLive.com
Female staffers face uphill climb - Erika Lovley - POLITICO.com
Senators' letter to Facebook - Politico Staff - POLITICO.com
Levin accuses Goldman Sachs of running 'conveyor belt' of toxic mortgages | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Monday, April 26, 2010
Mexico hobbled in drug war by arrests that lead nowhere
Senate Majority Issues Statement on Retirement Reforms and Budget Cuts/Balancing
Senate Republicans approve retirement reforms that will save taxpayers billions of dollars
Senate Majority Leader Bishop urges Granholm and Dillon to follow the Senate's lead and pass the bills
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Senate Republicans bucked political pressure by passing two significant reforms to the public employee retirement system that will help the state and our schools save $245 million next year and more than $3.1 billion during the next 10 years.
The critical reform measures are part of the Senate Republican plan to address Michigan's $1.4 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes. The initiatives will bring much-needed savings and financial stability to public education and control the cost of state government.
Since 2000, private sector compensation dropped 19.7 percent, while public sector wages and benefits increased 11 percent during the same period - a 31 percent difference. Republicans understand that this course is unsustainable.
Senate Bill 1227 will save schools $211 million (more than $118 per pupil) for the coming school year that, when coupled with the K-12 budget passed by the Senate last month, will keep school aid whole. Along with Senate Bill 1226, the reform's substantial savings will help the state and our public schools balance their budgets without laying off teachers. These measures are equally about saving jobs and reducing the cost of government.
Senate Republicans made a few changes to the governor's plan to make the reforms fiscally responsible. Her proposed increase in the multiplier was removed because it was estimated to cost schools $500 million in the long term.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop urges Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Speaker Andy Dillon to persuade the House to join with the Senate and immediately enact public employee retirement reforms.
Senate Republicans agree with Speaker Dillon's recent call for `bipartisan action' to enact cuts and reforms. We have introduced reforms to save more than $2 billion and several of our initiatives have already passed the Senate.
It is not about politics, it is about the future of our state. However, as the governor continues to remind us, schools need time to plan. We must approve the public employee retirement reforms now.
Secretary of State prepares to shape new campaign finance rules | - MLive.com
A Value-Added Tax For America? | GOVERNING
Campaign bundlers shake money trees - Josh Israel & Aaron Mehta - Center for Public Integrity - POLITICO.com
Max Baucus: A bank tax is coming - David Rogers - POLITICO.com
'Nobody wins' on immigration reform - Jonathan Martin - POLITICO.com
Mich. state Sen. Allen to run for US House | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Michigan State Legislature for the Week of April 25th
What's Going on in DC this Week
Detroit News blog tells us the following for the week of April 25th:
--Sun., April 25: Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm is the featured guest on CNN's State of the Union program from 9 to 10 a.m. She'll be talking about the state of the Michigan economy and rumors about her being a potential Supreme Court nominee.
From the Supreme Court on Monday: word on whether the Supreme Court will reopen the 1922 case against Illinois seeking the separation of the Mississippi River and Great Lakes watersheds.
--Tue., April 27: Sen. Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations digs deeper into the role investment bank Goldman Sachs played in the real estate crisis and subsequent market crash. Expect a lot of tough questions and big national headlines coming out of the Tuesday morning hearing.
--Thu., April 29: The House's Intelligence Committee, whose ranking member Rep. Pete Hoekstra is a Republican gubernatorial candidate, holds a closed door hearing on Flight 253 forensics. Though no press or public is allowed in the hearing, any big revelations could leak ... stay tuned.
Also next week: There could be more rumors on who the President will nominate to the Supreme Court. Two Michigan-connected names are popping up on the radar: Granholm and former Detroit Public Schools teacher Ann Claire Williams, so there could be some local interest.
From The Detroit News: http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/dcblog/index.php#ixzz0m6z4WNao
Allen announcing Congress bid intentions Monday | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Poll: Fieger a favorite among likely Dem voters | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Dems desperately seek diversity | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Poli-Bites: Here's an award for you, and one for you, and ... | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Climate Bill On Hold After Lindsey Graham Threatens To Withdraw Support Over Immigration
Raul Grijalva Gets Death Threats: Arizona Rep's Office To Close After Threats Over Immigration Bill
State House OKs ban on texting, driving | lansingstatejournal.com | Lansing State Journal
Obama slams 'misguided' Arizona immigration bill | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Friday, April 23, 2010
Roots of State Gridlock Tied to 1961-62 Constitutional Convention | DomeMagazine.com
Financial Reform in Congress
Thursday, April 22, 2010
College Tuition and Graduating in Three Years
Want to save $50,000? Try a three-year college degree.
With costs soaring, some colleges offer students a way to graduate early with a three-year college degree. But critics say students lose out on gaining breadth of experience.
By Amanda Paulson, / Staff writer Christian Science Monitor
posted March 12, 2010 at 12:52 pm EST
Carmen Lookshire is halfway through her first year of college, but she already has her studies mapped out – and is looking at graduation in just two more years.
The art history major is one of the first students to take advantage of the new three-year college degree at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. – part of a growing number of such programs designed to help students shave tuition costs and get to the job market or graduate school faster.
"It saves a year of tuition, and that's always a good thing," says Ms. Lookshire, who will be taking out loans to help with the $45,000 yearly bill. "But it's also a good challenge. I knew going into the program that I want to attend grad school, and I thought it was a good way to show the schools I'd like to go to that I was committed."
Students always have had the option of finishing their degrees faster if they accumulate enough credits. And many more take five or six years to get through a four-year program. But recently, the idea of a structured three-year degree has gained traction, due in part to spiraling college costs and the struggling economy.
The few schools to offer one so far have made it an optional program for very driven students, with the same requirements as a standard degree. But some educators also question why the four-year, 120-credit model has to be the norm (unlike in Europe, where the standard is often three years).
"We have an undergraduate curriculum that is in need of pruning, reengineering, and clearing out the rubble," says Robert Zemsky, an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. "From an educational point of view, I think it would be a stronger curriculum. >From a financial viewpoint, it would save families 25 percent."
While almost everyone agrees that soaring costs are a problem, many educators push back against anything that would pare down the college experience, arguing that the strength of the US system – particularly with liberal arts schools – is its emphasis on a broad-based education, along with the ability it gives students to explore new subjects, mature, and gain meaningful experiences in the classroom and on campus.
"I don't think our society suffers from overeducation. It suffers from undereducation," says Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University and a former assistant secretary of Education. About one-third of college freshmen enter in need of remediation, she notes, and spend their first year catching up.
Derek Bok, president emeritus of Harvard University, adds that trimming would most likely mean cutting "general education" courses already overburdened with the task of teaching students to write and speak. He envisions a higher-education landscape in which a few elite schools would continue to offer four-year programs while others cut back to three – and begin to resemble vocational schools.
"Whether the savings from a three-year college would be worth the sacrifices is a value judgment," Dr. Bok wrote in an e-mail. "But those of us who believe deeply in a well-rounded education as the best preparation for a full life will clearly regard this change as a long step backward."
While a broad shift in graduation requirements doesn't seem imminent, many more schools are offering formal support to students who do an accelerated program.
Bates College, Franklin & Marshall College, Lipscomb University, Manchester College, and Southern New Hampshire University are among those offering three-year programs. Rhode Island lawmakers have approved a bill that requires all state schools to create a three-year bachelor's program by this fall.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is also considering an "accelerated" three-year program for students, meant to save them money. This, no doubt, in response to student protests about tuition hikes at the state university.
"It's an idea that's been around for many years in the background," says Roland King, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "Once we got into seriously looking at dropping the cost of a college education with the economic downturn, it's moved to the forefront."
The idea got an added jolt last year from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, a former Education secretary, when he compared a three-year degree to fuel-efficient cars that outcompeted gas guzzlers.
Not all students want it. Bates's program has existed for nearly 45 years, but few students take advantage of it: just 34 over the past 10 years. At Hartwick, however, 22 percent of this year's applicants expressed interest in the quicker degree.
Margaret Drugovich, Hartwick's president, says she launched the program after seeing the number of families who wanted a liberal arts education but couldn't afford the high costs. Students take an extra course each semester, get preferred registration, and are required to take a course during the school's optional January term. Study abroad is still possible – often during that "J-term" – and advisers help students fill all their requirements. "It's a student-by-student thing," she says, noting the option works best for students who are more organized and mature.
Those who choose to graduate early sometimes have mixed feelings. Ryan Schwartz, a media relations specialist in Austin, Texas, graduated from Stanford University in 2006 in just under three years, due in part to AP credits from high school. "At the time, I was really excited. I was ready to get out into the real world ... and Stanford was ridiculously expensive," says Mr. Schwartz. But he's come to regret some of what he missed: senior year with his friends, extra classes that interested him, a final research project and thesis. "College gives an opportunity for you to really expand on your vision for your life. By finishing in such a short time, you miss out on widening your horizons."
Still, Mr. Zemsky points out, only a few students are looking for a liberal arts experience. Others agree that changes are worth at least investigating. "I don't think there's any magic in 120 credit hours," says William McKinney, vice chancellor for academic affairs at Indiana University-Purdue in Fort Wayne. "The concern I have is that we're letting [the issue] of cost drive the conversation."
Romney endorses Hoekstra for governor | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
State budget problem is not just taxes, and it's not just spending | - MLive.com
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Granholm plans lose support | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Monday, April 19, 2010
Can Michigan afford generous tax exemptions for retirees? | - MLive.com
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Taxes in Michigan are out of whack, but who should pay? | - MLive.com
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Lansing political food fight begins anew | detnews.com | The Detroit News
Monday, April 12, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor - Send In the Professors - NYTimes.com
Political pendulum in Michigan swings away from the Democrats
A politician for a polarized court - William Yeomans - POLITICO.com
Hoekstra and 100 Jobs Theme
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Joel I. Klein, Michael Lomax and Janet Murgu�a - Why great teachers matter to low-income students
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Fix - How will John Paul Stevens retirement affect the midterms?
- How will John Paul Stevens retirement affect the midterms?
Friday, April 9, 2010
UP Legislative Retirements due to term limits
Upper Peninsula Congressional Seniority
Stupak Retires
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Threats to Governors
Friday, April 2, 2010
chatter
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Renewables, Sustainability and Land use
Your Government May be Watching Your Every Move
Technology
Sensors Make Cities Smarter
Call it City 2.0: a metropolis where officials instantly monitor all of the urban environment's constantly changing dynamics--the outside temperature; snow or rainfall; traffic; and perhaps most importantly, people moving through the streets, flowing from one neighborhood to the next. This system helps officials send resources to the street corner where gangs are converging, manage traffic before it becomes congested, and respond to emergencies seamlessly--automatically--before they're even reported.
It may sound like science fiction, but the idea of a living, sentient city--one in which managers use real-time data to respond to events as they occur--isn't the stuff of fantasy anymore. By creating intricately linked networks of cameras and sensors throughout an urban area, cities in the U.S. and elsewhere are already making great strides toward tracking weather conditions and traffic flow, to name a few, and then using that data to govern more effectively.
The ultimate City 2.0 vision is of a "highly networked, highly metered environment so that an administrator can oversee the inputs and the outputs," says Rob Enderle, a technology analyst with the Enderle Group. Tapping into all this real-time data, he says, means "you can run a city cheaper and have happier and safer citizens." The city, in short, becomes a more efficient place for people to live and work. It also means a government can do more with less.
The reality isn't that far away. Many of the building blocks are familiar, even mundane: sensors that monitor weather conditions and air pollution; smart-grid technology that helps deliver energy more efficiently; cameras that track the flow of pedestrians and automobile traffic; devices that measure and relay snowfall to the public works department; and access to Wi-Fi and cloud computing.
Alone, each of these blocks performs one discrete function for one purpose. But if a city fused all of those different data streams, it could create a place keenly aware of changes in the urban environment. With that awareness, a city could respond rapidly and efficiently where and when needed.
The sentient city is still an emerging idea, and managers will have to address many issues--technological and otherwise--before smart cities can flourish. But as more and more cities implement and refine the tools used to gather and assess all this data, the idea of City 2.0 is a vision that's quickly coming into focus.
he genesis of these ideas is decades old. Enderle likens the vision of sentient cities to the concept of "arcologies," the classic sci-fi notion of megalopolises made up of gargantuan, self-contained structures that house thousands of residents in an all-encapsulating environment. At the arcology dynamic's core is the idea that if you can contain all aspects of a city's life and needs, you can monitor and control what happens there.
While arcologies remain firmly ensconced in the pages of Utopian literature, cities have begun implementing technologies that approach somewhat similar ideals of monitoring the urbanscape as a whole. Traffic-light cameras, for example, are ubiquitous in many places. Some localities have gone further, installing video cameras throughout the city and creating a network of video streams. Chicago is the most prominent U.S. city to outfit itself with such a web of cameras. In 2004, the Windy City installed 250 surveillance cameras at sites thought to be at risk of a terror attack. Those devices were linked to 2,000 other cameras already spread throughout the city and networked into Chicago's emergency dispatch center. Mayor Richard Daley said his goal is to have a camera trained on every single intersection in the city.
Then there are gunshot location systems-a technology that uses audio sensors attached to rooftops and telephone poles to detect when a gun is fired and pinpoint the location. In 1995, Redwood City, Calif., was the first in the nation to test this system, which lets police respond to shots without receiving a 911 call. Today more than 30 U.S. cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., rely on the same acoustic sensors.
Surveillance cameras and gunshot detection were the first steps toward a fully sensor-equipped city. In more recent years as sensor technology has improved, the focus has broadened from public safety and emergency response to include subtler changes in environment. Matt Welsh, an associate professor of computer science at Harvard University, has spent the past four years designing and building a system of sensors to constantly monitor conditions in Cambridge, Mass. Welsh and his team have worked with the city to disperse nearly 30 sensors around the relatively small town. "We wanted to capture the ephemeral changes in environment," he says. Using the sensor data, Welsh hopes to gain understanding of how the city works on a minute level. He's recently begun looking at air pollution levels in areas with high automobile traffic, for example, and how those levels shift during the course of a day. The information from monitoring those outputs continuously on a city block, he suggests, could be extremely useful in the city's future decision-making.
Meanwhile, other cities are experimenting with monitoring residents' energy use in real time. Pilot programs that let citizens view their individual energy consumption as it's being used are up and running in Houston; Boulder, Colo.; and Dubuque, Iowa.
hile the technology for a sentient city is already available, what's missing is the ability to connect all the different data streams to form a comprehensive picture of a city's happenings. Wilmington, N.C., however, is trying. In February, the city and surrounding New Hanover County launched a pilot that could make it the nation's first true smart city. Using cameras and sensors, the city will analyze and respond to everything from traffic congestion and fuel consumption to water quality and sewage capacity.
For the most part, though, cities have yet to make the leap to fusing different kinds of sensor data. "The concept of City 2.0, is that all these things would be networked," Enderle says. "But I don't see anybody doing a great job of connecting all these things together."
As with so many IT projects, the obstacles toward a fully networked sentient city aren't really technological. The issues are much bigger than that, says Mark Cleverley, the director of strategy at IBM's Global Government Industry. "It's about how technology is changing," he says, "but it's also about how society is changing."
It's also about getting a city's agencies to work together to share and analyze sensor data. And that can be a challenge. "The big problem is working through the political structure," Enderle says. "It can be very turf-oriented and very fragmented when it comes to this kind of stuff." And what works for one city may not work for another. Cleverley worked with Stockholm to build a congestion--pricing system that utilized radio--frequency ID tags to track citizens' automobiles throughout the city. Cleverley says there's been widespread acceptance of the program and a general agreement that it's had a dramatic effect on reducing traffic congestion. But when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg floated the idea of congestion pricing in 2008, it took his citizens a New York minute to rebuke the notion.
Unsurprisingly there are privacy concerns. While most citizens probably don't mind the idea of pole-mounted devices collecting data on rainfall or air pollution, they are likely to be less receptive to the notion of cameras or traffic sensors that follow their movements throughout a city. Those kinds of concerns are not insurmountable, but they must be dealt with, says Cleverley, who notes that Chicago adopted a policy with its vast network of cameras that individuals' faces are, by default, blurred out. Law enforcement officials must go through an approval process, akin to obtaining a warrant, if they want to look for a specific person.
In the end, the collection of sensor data isn't what's important--it's how a city uses that information. "You can deliver better outcomes for society if you think about a city as a system of systems," says Cleverley. "What these technologies do is make it easier to track these systems. What they don't do is guarantee success."
Campaigns--Stupak Race
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC are
backing former Charlevoix County Commissioner Connie Saltonstall’s Democratic
primary challenge to Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak.
The endorsements come in the wake of Stupak’s high-profile effort to insert tight
restrictions on federal funding of abortions into the health care reform law.
Last Week, Saltonstall won the endorsements of the National Organization for
Women and MI List, a Michigan organization that backs female candidates who
support abortion rights.
NARAL announced Wednesday that it was donating the maximum of $5,000 to
Saltonstall’s primary campaign
Guns on Campus
>>> The NMU Sportsmen Gun Club plans to participate in next week's
>>> national "Students for Concealed Carry on Campus: Empty Holster
>>> Protest," a silent protest against state laws and college policies
>>> that ban concealed weapons on college campuses. Participating
>>> students will wear visible empty gun holsters from Monday through
>>> Thursday, April 5-9. We are informing you of this event so you will
>>> not be alarmed if you see one or more students displaying gun
>>> holsters during the protest period. For more information, contact
>>> Jeff Mincheff of NMU Public Safety (jminchef@nmu.edu) or Fred Gygi,
>>> student event organizer (fgygi@nmu.edu). NMU's current policy is
>>> that anything capable of firing a projectile is considered a weapon
>>> and must be registered and stored at NMU Public Safety and Police
>>> Services.
>>> Cindy Paavola