Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, said last night, during a televised debate, that when a woman is impregnated during a rape, “it’s something God intended.” If you don’t believe me, you can find the footage here… I suppose, in a way, it’s a step forward for the Republican party, as, just a few weeks ago, we were talking about Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, and his belief that “legitimate rape” does not lead to pregnancy… So I guess we should be thankful. But, somehow, I just can’t find it in me to warm up to a pro-rape candidate. Still, though, I do think it would be pretty cool to have an elected official with insight into the thought process of God. I imagine that could come in pretty handy, right?
Mourdock, who has been endorsed by Romney, is presently just .3% ahead of his Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly in the polls, and I can’t imagine that this most recent comment will do anything but lose him support. So, it looks as though we may have another opportunity to flip a red seat to blue in the Senate. If you’d like to contribute toward making that happen, you can donate to the Donnelly campaign here. (The Tea Party-backed Mourdock had beaten long-time incumbent Senator Richard Lugar in the primary, after portraying him as too willing to work with Democrats.)
As for the accompanying image, I’m sorry if it doesn’t make sense… It’s just the first thing that popped into my head when I started thinking about God, rape and pregnancy. (Zeus, for those of you who don’t know, was quite fond of taking the shape of animals, and, in that form, fathering immensely powerful children through rape. The image above is of him, relaxing post-coitally, after having mounted Europa. I believe the result of that first union was Minos, but it could have been Rhadamanthys or Sarpedon. I’m ashamed to say that I’m not very good when it comes to mythological birth order.)
When I received the above message earlier this afternoon, I didn’t think there was any way that it could possibly be true… I knew, of course, that Ypsi’s schools had suffered severe cuts. Just a few weeks ago, I’d watched Linette design a poster for Fly Children’s Art Center, drawing attention to the fact that kids in Ypsi Public Schools now get, on average, only 20 minutes of art instruction twice a week. I knew that the situation was dire. But I was truly shocked to read that one librarian was servicing all of the children attending our five elementary schools. I wasn’t mentally prepared to accept the fact that we lived in a community where children could no longer access books… So, this evening, I contacted Amanda Uhle, the executive director of our local creative writing non-profit 826 Michigan, and asked her to tell me that, somewhere along the line, a mistake had been made, and this wasn’t really happening in Ypsilanti. Sadly, though, she confirmed it, telling me that, through Amy Sumerton, 826’s program director, they were working diligently to pull together a small team of volunteers, each willing to go into a school for a few hours a week, and help children check out books, conduct research, etc… I told her that I’d help by putting the word out… And, now that I’ve done that, I’m going to rant.
How long are we going to put up with this insanity before we take to the streets and demand that something be done? What’s the breaking point? When do we start chaining ourselves to the doors of our public schools, demanding that our kids be given the educations that they’re entitled to? When do our kids, like the kids of Detroit, start walking out, and demanding what’s rightfully theirs?
I totally respect the folks from 826 for doing this. Nothing could be more noble, in my opinion, than finding creative ways to overcome obstacles and put books into the hands of children. But at what point to we stop participating in this broken system? At what point do we stop covering for the legislators in Lansing who, quite honestly, would rather pay to incarcerate our children than provide them with educations, and the tools they need to pull themselves out of poverty? Their agenda, as we know, is to dismantle public education, and replace it with a for-profit system that allows corporate interests to siphon money from the public coffers, while destroying the teachers union in the process. We know this is the case, and yet we continue to rationally deal with each problem along that path as it arises, rather than to go after those we know to be responsible.
Enabling the rich to pay less in taxes while our children are unable to access their school libraries, I would argue, is a treasonous act. And we need to start acting accordingly.
Is there waste in the public school system as it currently exists? Yes. Should we work to eliminate it? Absolutely. But it’s not school teachers who wrecked our economy, and, contrary to what Mitt Romney might say, it’s not Big Bird that’s got us into debt. (The entire budget of PBS is spent by the military in a mere six hours.) We’re here today because of deregulated financial markets, a reckless foreign policy that put our troops on the ground in the middle east, and the Bush tax cuts. We are not here because we employed too many librarians, and spent too much in our socialist quest to teach toddlers how to count using puppets.
Humanity, as we know, is facing a crisis the magnitude of which modern man has never seen. Our population is swelling, our natural resources are dwindling, and our ecosystem is collapsing. We are running out oil. The “dead zones” in our oceans are growing. Temperatures are rising. Species are dying off. And “thousand year” storms are becoming commonplace. We’ve not only left the next generation a dying world, but, now, terrified and consumed by greed, we’re taking away their educations. We’re taking from them the only lifeline that they have. If we were smart, we’d cut class sizes in half, recruit the brightest people in our country to become teachers, and invest in education at unprecedented levels. Instead, we’re upping class size, encouraging our most knowledgable teachers to retire, and effectively shuttering our libraries. This is not a viable long term solution. This is the way a civilization commits suicide.
Over the past three years, we’ve discussed the troubling case of Davontae Sanford several times. As you may recall, Davontae was taken into police custody in Detroit at the age of 14 for the murder of four people. We’re told that Davontae, who is developmentally disabled, and blind in one eye, confessed to the murders. Defense attorney Kim McGinnis describes the series of events leading up to his confession like this:
“Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”
Davontae, who read at a third-grade level at the time of his arrest, signed and initialed a typewritten confession given to him by a detective. No video of his questioning, which took place without the presence of his mother or legal council, exists. And, in his signed confession, Davontae claimed that he’d committed the murders with a different weapon than the one which was actually used by the killer. In spite of this, however, Davontae was convicted and sent to prison, where he’s been sentenced to serve from thirty-seven to ninety years. And, that’s not the worst of it. Just months after being sent to prison, an imprisoned hit man by the name of Vincent Smothers confessed to having committed the drug-related killings. Furthermore, he says Davontae had nothing to do with it.
Everyone, it would seem, knows that this young man is innocent, and yet he remains in prison. I’ve been in contact with his mother, Taminko Sanford, over the years, trying as best that I can to point her toward resources, like The Innocence Project, but it seemed, until recently, that nothing was working. While a few articles were written on blogs, like this one, and in the Detroit papers, it didn’t look as though anyone from outside of the region really cared. According to Taminko, though, that’s finally starting to change. Several months ago, in a comment left on this site, she mentioned that Dateline NBC had expressed interest, and just a few weeks ago, she told us about an article that was being written for The New Yorker. Well it looks as though that story is now out. While the article itself is only available online to subscribers of The New Yorker, or those willing to purchase an electronic copy, the author has a blog post about the piece, which can be found here… Here’s a clip.
…Over the course of several hours (with the police), he started talking and telling stories. At first he said that four friends had committed the crime. He was released in the morning, but taken back to the police station at the end of the day. This time, he declared that he had committed the murders himself and drew an accurate sketch of the crime scene. He was then transported to another station, where his second statement was videotaped.
In the videotape, he appears to have no sense of the stakes; he enters the room, smiles, and plays with what may be a one-way mirror until the detective interviewing him, Sergeant Michael Russell, comes in. When asked his constitutional rights, he rattles them off so perfectly that Russell says with a smile, “O.K., almost sounds like you’re reading it.” Then, in the clip shown above, Russell reads the statement, asking him questions. Sanford answers “yes” and “no,” rarely saying more and, once, putting his head in his hands. “I wanted everything to be right, because if it wasn’t right, he wasn’t going to believe me and he would keep me longer,” Sanford later told me. “I really wanted to go home.” After the videotape was played at his trial, six months later, Sanford pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder and was later sentenced to thirty-seven to ninety years in prison.
A couple of weeks after his sentencing, however, another man—Smothers—confessed to the same murders. Unlike Sanford’s interrogation, Smothers’s interrogation, as well as his confession, was taped. And in the videotape, as he is being interviewed about a different hit, he confesses to the Runyon (Street) murders, without prompting, recalling details specific to the scene. He names an accomplice, but he never mentions Sanford.
Which confessor was actually there? The hit man, or the fourteen-year-old with no real criminal past who had a reputation for making things up and talking big at school? Within weeks of his arrest, Sanford recanted his confession, saying he’d made up the story and that the police had told him key details about the crime. Smothers has stuck to his story. Ballistics evidence at Runyon Street has also been linked to Smothers and the accomplice Smothers named: a bullet fired at Runyon came from the same gun that Smothers had used in a different hit.
Perhaps Sanford was there with Smothers and his accomplice? That seems unlikely, since a witness saw only two masked figures fleeing the scene, and an investigator for the prosecution could not connect the kid to Smothers or the accomplice. To credit this scenario, you would have to believe that a seasoned hit man like Smothers, who took pride in his meticulousness and discipline, would rely on a half-blind, learning-disabled minor. You also have to believe that that fourteen-year-old, prone to braggadocio, would then exercise impressive discipline by not mentioning that he’d once worked with a hit man—street cred that could come in handy in prison. Sanford was recorded on many occasions without his apparent knowledge, yet the prosecution offered no evidence suggesting that he knew Smothers.
It’s hard to know what the Wayne County prosecutor believes, because her office never offered a coherent theory of the case, at times suggesting that Smothers wasn’t at Runyon and, at other times, that he worked with Sanford. She declined to discuss the case because Sanford is still trying to appeal his plea. Sanford felt hopeful when Smothers first confessed and Michigan’s Court of Appeals ordered proceedings to determine whether he might be innocent. His prospects seemed even brighter when a former homicide cop, who is close to his family, testified that Sanford was with him at the time of the shootings and a key witness testified that the shooters fleeing the crime were taller than Davontae was at the time. But later, the alibi witness was convincingly discredited.
The judge who presided over Sanford’s trial and subsequent “innocence hearing” rejected Sanford’s bid to withdraw his plea, and it is now up to Michigan’s Court of Appeals to decide whether that decision should stand. Even if the court finds in Sanford’s favor, the state has the right to prosecute Sanford again, with Smothers’s confession to the Runyon homicides as part of the record. “Davontae has been railroaded,” Smothers told me, adding later: “The police and the prosecutor can say whatever they want, but they knew he was innocent. They started the coverup from day one.”
And here’s the video which was mentioned above, of the arresting officer reading back the typewritten confession to Davontae.
Let’s hope, finally, this brings about some positive action in the case.
Our thoughts are with you, Davontae and Taminko.
note: For those of you who are so inclined, I understand from my friend Christine Moellering, who is also in contact with Taminko, that Davontae appreciates books and letters. His address is:
Davontae Sanford
MDOC ID: 684070
Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility
1576 West Blue Water Highway
Ionia, MI 48846
And the rules for sending packages to inmates in the state of Michigan can be found here.
And, just in case you didn’t find this story heartbreaking enough, here’s a Facebook update from Taminko this summer.
People came away from the last presidential debate not talking about Romney’s commanding presence, but his gaffs. What had people talking the next day, as they stood around the coffee pot at work, wasn’t a clever zinger that the successful dismantler of companies had made about Obama’s hatred of capitalism, but Romney’s nonsensical and offensive statements concerning the “binders full of women” that he’d been given as Governor, and the fact that, in his mind, single mothers are to blame for the gun violence that plagues America. And, as a result, his momentum slowed considerably. And it didn’t help that Obama, having been criticized for his lackluster performance up to that point in the campaign, began to up his game. The President went on the offensive, aggressively pointing out Romney’s lies, and coining new, focus group-approved phrases, like Romnesia. Romney, as a result, started to see his advances in swing states like Ohio evaporate, and would-be allies turn away. Even the Salt Lake City Tribune, the largest Mormon paper in the U.S., came out in support of Obama a few days ago, saying that Romney’s agenda “remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.” So, Romney needed a decisive win in tonight’s foreign policy debate. Sadly, though, that didn’t happen. Instead, a dazed and confused Romney stumbled his way though, from start to finish, like someone desperately wanting for this whole sad affair to be over.
OBAMA: Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia… the 1980 are calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.
You say that you’re not interested in duplicating what happened in Iraq. But, just a few weeks ago, you said you think we should have more troops in Iraq right now. And the — the challenge we have — I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy — but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong. You said we should have gone into Iraq, despite that fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction. You said that we should still have troops in Iraq to this day. You indicated that we shouldn’t be passing nuclear treaties with Russia despite the fact that 71 senators, Democrats and Republicans, voted for it. You said that, first, we should not have a timeline in Afghanistan. Then you said we should. Now you say maybe, or it depends, which means not only were you wrong, but you were also confusing in sending mixed messages both to our troops and our allies.
So, what — what we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map. And unfortunately, that’s the kind of opinions that you’ve offered throughout this campaign, and it is not a recipe for American strength, or keeping America safe over the long haul…
Ypsilanti, as most of you probably know, has partisan City Council elections, which means that, in the primaries, Democrats run against Democrats, and Republicans run against Republicans. Well, come Election Day, Ypsilantians will be voting to amend the City Charter, and change that. The following analysis comes from our friend Richard Murphy, the former City Planner of Ypsilanti.
On this November’s ballot, City of Ypsilanti voters will be asked if we should approve a revised City Charter. The Charter is effectively the city’s constitution, which governs how the city should be run, and can only be changed by the voters. The proposed revision appears here. (A version which shows the edits can be found here.) There’s been a lot wrong with the Charter Commission’s process, but at least one of the proposed revisions is appealing: changing City Council elections to a non-partisan system.
Ypsilanti is one of only three cities in the entire state that has partisan Mayor and City Council elections–the others are Ann Arbor and Ionia, and I know at least Ann Arbor to suffer from some of the same problems that Ypsi does. Because both cities reliably vote overwhelmingly Democratic in November, the partisan ballot effectively moves the entire local election to the August Democratic primary, forcing all candidates to run as Democrats to be viable, regardless of their actual beliefs. (Next month’s ballot includes exactly 1 candidate in each of our three City Council Wards. In Ann Arbor, similarly, 4 of the 5 council races are uncontested.)
First, a partisan ballot disqualifies a pool of people whom I’d otherwise consider highly qualified candidates. The Federal Hatch Act of 1939 bars various public employees from running for partisan office if they are responsible for administering Federal funding, or in some cases if their positions are paid for at all by Federal funds. In 2010, Ypsi Ward 2 Council candidate Claudia Pettit had to withdraw from the race due to the Hatch Act, and there have been several other recent cases in Washtenaw County.
Ypsi has a surprising concentration of residents who are County or State employees, and who would make excellent Councilmembers. By retaining partisan elections, though, we’re effectively saying that we don’t want Councilmembers who have backgrounds in public safety, economic development, public finance, public health–if you work in one of those fields at any level, chances are your position is partially Federally funded.
Second, the fact that the election that matters is held in August effectively disenfranchises voters. In 2010, about 2,000 Ypsilanti voters turned out for the August Democratic primary; about 4,500 turned out for the November election–a simple calendar change there would have doubled the number of votes cast for City Council. Additionally, choosing our Mayor and Council through the August Democratic primary means that anyone who wants to vote in the Republican primary doesn’t get a voice on the local elections, because they are only allowed to vote one side of the August ballot. This is a case where local Democrats should probably be supporting moving the local election that matters to November: if we’re going to get bent out of shape for things like asking voters to check a box declaring that they’re not breaking the law, because that offers too much of a barrier to voting, isn’t it pretty ridiculous to maintain a local election calendar that halves the number of voters who get to participate? (Yes, I would love if all qualified voters came out to vote in August, and February, and May, but removing artificial barriers to ballot access is better than blaming the victims.)
Finally, I’d like to see our local elections go non-partisan simply because today’s party identifiers don’t mean a whole lot at the local level, and only serve to obscure discussion about candidate’s actual positions and qualifications. Are we expecting our City Council to vote on closing Guantanamo, or decide the DREAM Act, or authorize remote drone strikes, or consider national health care reform? What’s the Republican position on a fire department of only full-time staff vs. a hybrid full-time/on-call system? What’s the Democratic position on whether the parking ratios in the Zoning Ordinance are accurate? Do we really want voters in November picking our city council based on whether or not they have the same letter after their name as the President? Especially when the Democratic identifier on Ypsi’s local ballot has become so meaningless, because any serious candidate in recent years runs as a Democrat, regardless of their actual beliefs?
This summer’s screaming match about whether Mike Eller was a “real Democrat” is a great demonstration of the problem. Eller ran as an Independent in Nov 2008 and got beat hard, so ran in the Democratic primary this summer to take advantage of voter presumption. Both online and in person, his supporters attempted to deflect any criticism by hiding behind the party label. They asserted, in effect, that the only things that mattered were the campaign’s talking points–beyond that, the “D” after his name should tell you everything you need to know. The opposition had to break down that shield of party identification in order to actually talk about his beliefs. (I did enjoy when the conversation took a turn for the surreal, with Eller supporters arguing that Councilman Murdock was similarly a sham because he had been part of the Human Rights Party in the ‘70s, as if “he’s for human rights” is an effective attack…)
I’ve been told that Eller disproves my point: that it was “only because he was tied to his past party affiliation that he could be beat” this summer, and therefore the party labels are important. Not true — Eller’s past affiliation with the America First Party was at the state level, even as he ran as an Independent in Ypsi. Even if we had been running a non-partisan election in 2008, Eller would have still had exactly the same affiliation with AFP to reference this time around. It’s the beliefs he stated then, and his refusal to disavow them this year, that made the difference in every conversation I had with my neighbors, not whether or not he was a “real Democrat”.
And, sure, folks like Rodney Nanney are backing the non-partisan elections bit, which is always a good litmus test: is this really just a ploy to flood the council with conservatives by allowing them to leave behind the baggage of party identification? Again, the number of (what I consider) conservatives that we see run as Democrats seems adequate proof that they’re unafraid of sheep’s clothing, and the current system provides no protection against closet Republicans. (Besides, if you think Rodney’s support is a good litmus test, you’ll still have that yardstick to measure candidates in a non-partisan election.)
The proposal, a jungle primary in August with the top two candidates advancing to November, does have one major flaw: currently, our Mayor and Council elections are mercifully short, effectively ending with the August primary every year. Considering the intensity we all bring to every contested election around here, I’m not sure anyone would survive a campaign that lasted all the way to November. So here’s my proposal: if you want to vote against the Charter, but like the idea of removing artificial barriers for both candidates and voters with a non-partisan election, we can bring a petition next year to amend the charter to provide a November, non-partisan, instant runoff voting system for our local offices.
update: Our Mayor has now weighed in. The following comment was left by Paul Schreiber in the comments section earlier today.
Murph makes a good point about the Hatch Act, but I will be voting against the proposed Ypsilanti city charter for two reasons. One, party affiliation quickly communicates positions on issues to voters. For example, the 22nd circuit court electon is non-partisan. Jim Fink and Carol Kuhnke are running for this position. One is a staunch conservative and the other is a progressive liberal. Knowing party affilition for this race informs voters better than any other piece of information. I’m not saying that judicial elections should be partisan. I am saying that legislative elections like city council should be partisan.
Secondly, the proposed charter has no automatic review by a vote of the people every 16 years. The current charter passed in 1994 has that. That’s why 16 years later, in 2010, voters approved convening a charter commission to consider a new charter. The charter commission eliminated this review vote in the proposed charter, so the new charter would last indefinitely until city council took action or a citizen petition was filed. I think all charters should have a periodic review by the voters.
update: Saying, “I would like to dispel at least one myth right up front: the non-partisan proposal does not represent a right wing conspiracy to take over the city,” Charter Commission member Bob Doyle has also weighed in. His comments, in their entirety, can be found here.
“Davontae saw the police lights after the killings were discovered around the corner from his house, and walked up to the police to find out what was going on. They told him, ‘You know what’s going on,’ and took him downtown. Twenty hours later, he signed a confession which contained only the details that the police already knew at the time.”
