Happy Thanksgiving

By Mark | November 21, 2018

A few years ago, I made the decision not to write anything new for Thanksgiving, but, instead, to recycle something that I’d written the year before. And, ever since then, I’ve been posting the same damn thing. Well, here it is again. I was tempted to remove some of the old references, and replace them with new ones, but it occurred to me that altering this post, which is fast becoming a family classic, would be like changing It’s A Wonderful Life so that Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dabbed and flossed instead of dancing the Charleston in that scene that takes place over their high school pool. So, with that in mind, here it is, untouched… Enjoy….

macy11turkey

This Thanksgiving morning I’m tempted to get political and say that I’m thankful above all else for the fact that a majority of Americans still feel as though Sarah Palin is unfit to serve as President, and that former U.S. House majority leader Tom DeLay was found guilty yesterday of money laundering. But, I’m trying to think less about politics today, and the swirling gyre of weaponized stupidity that is the Tea Party, and focus instead on friends and family. I probably don’t say it here as often as I should, but I’m incredibly thankful for both. Without my family, I wouldn’t be here. And, without my friends, I wouldn’t be the person that am today… Sure, I might be a better, more successful and more productive version of myself without them, but I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. So, before I get started with this post, I’d just like to note that I’m incredibly thankful for everyone that I’m related to, from my grandmother in Kentucky, to my daughter, who is now in the other room, looking at our enormous turkey through the little glass porthole in the oven. There have been some bad times, and we’ve lost some people over the years, but, all in all, I’d say that we’ve been really fortunate as a family. As far as I know, all of us that are alive at the moment are healthy, happy, employed and have roofs over our heads, which is quite an accomplishment in today’s world. As for friends, the same, for the most part, goes for them. A few are temporarily without partners or between jobs, but, as far as I know, the people in my friendship network (“tribe” sounded too new age) are doing pretty well, and I’m thankful for that. But, what I want to write about today are a few of the less obvious things that I’m thankful for – things that I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you before.

I’m thankful that my friends Dan and Matt, when they’d graduated from college, moved to Ann Arbor to live with me. If they hadn’t, I might never have had the misdirected encouragement I needed to start a band. And, if the three of us hadn’t formed a band, I probably wouldn’t have ever ventured into Ypsilanti, where I met my wife, Linette. There are others that played a role as well, like Ward Tomich, who booked us to play at Cross Street Station that fateful night. Without all of these folks, I’d likely be living in the forest today, sucking nutrients from moss-covered rocks.

I’m thankful for the car crash that my dad had in the late 60’s, which almost tore his arm from his body. If it hadn’t happened, my dad surely would shipped off to fight in Vietnam, with the other men that he’d been training with. Of the dozen or so men in his group, only two returned alive. I cannot imagine growing up without my father.

I’m thankful that my mother encouraged my father to apply for job at AT&T after he was released from the Navy. (He worked at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital after recovering from his accident.) He’d been working highway construction jobs when she talked him into applying for a position at a remote audio relay station of some kind near Monticello, Kentucky. He got that job, flipping switches and listening in on people’s private phone calls, and the rest is history. He steadily climbed up through the ranks, ending his career at the company headquarters in New Jersey – probably one of the few people without a college degree to do so. If this hadn’t happened, I would likely still be in the same small town in Kentucky today, instead of in the worldly, sophisticated metropolis of Ypsilanti, Michigan.

While my parents never graduated from college, they did both attend classes as they could, which wasn’t easy with full-time jobs and two kids to raise. I remember pretty clearly my mom studying Spanish late at night at the kitchen table. And I remember them proof-reading class assignments for one another. It made an impression on me, and I’m forever thankful for it. It’ll probably make my mom cry to hear it, but I’m also thankful that they stopped taking me to church at a young age.

I’m thankful that my parents valued education enough to settle our family in a decent school district, instead of closer to where my father was going to be working. My dad, most days, left for work at 5:00 AM to catch the bus, and didn’t return until 7:00 PM or so at night. He did that for over a dozen years straight, and, because of that, I got to attend a great public school, where I met people like Dan and Matt – the guys I mentioned above who moved to Ann Arbor to make noise, drink $1 pitchers of beer, and publish zines with me.

Speaking of sacrifice, I’m also thankful that my distant relatives made the decision to come to America when they did. They did so without knowing if they’d ever see their homelands again. They left everything they knew in England, Sweden, Scotland, and Poland, in order to make a better life for their families. And, it’s because of their sacrifices that I’m here today, not having to work in the fields from sun up to sun down as they did.

Oh, and I’m thankful that, of all the mental illnesses in the world, I got OCD, which kind of has its up-side.

OK, there’a whole lot more I’d like to say, but that’ll have to be it for now, as the buzzer on the oven is ringing.

Happy holidays.

[note: The image at the top of the post, if I remember correctly, is from the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. If I had to guess, I’d say that the balloon was supposed to depict a kind of turkey-mosquito hybrid that plagued the United States at the time.]

Posted in History, Mark's Life, Monkey Power Trio | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Saying, “It is what it is,” Donald Trump announces that we will be giving the Saudis a pass on the cold-blooded murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident and Washington Post reporter

By Mark | November 20, 2018

Today, Donald Trump issued an extremely unusual official statement from the White House on the October 2 murder in Istanbul of United States resident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist. After declaring the world to be “a very dangerous place,” the President, in his statement, made the case as to why, in his opinion, even if Khashoggi’s murder was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and carried out by a 15-person Saudi assassination squad, we should look the other way, as we rely on Saudi oil, and want to keep selling the royal family our American fighter jets and advanced weapons systems. The bottom line, Donald Trump said, after parroting Saudi talking points about Khashoggi being an “enemy of the state,” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, is that “The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia.” [Khashoggi, by the way, was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and, in fact, considered them a terrorist organization.]

In his official statement on the matter, Donald Trump makes it a point to reiterate that we cannot know for certain that the assassination of Khashoggi, which we know was carried out by 15 Saudis who had flown into Istanbul with bone saws for dismembering his body, was called for by Mohammed bin Salman. “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information,” Trump said, “but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event… maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t!”

Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t! [The exclamation point is Trump’s.]

Well, according to the CIA, it would appear as though he did.

Four days ago, the following ran in the Washington Post, in a feature titled, “CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination.”

…The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CIA’s assessment, in which officials have said they have high confidence, is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation and complicates the Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally. A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate, where he had gone to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

In reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.

It is not clear if Khalid knew that Khashoggi would be killed, but he made the call at his brother’s direction, according to the people familiar with the call, which was intercepted by U.S. intelligence…

So, once again, Donald Trump is taking the side of a despot over his own intelligence agencies. The CIA told him that they knew Mohammed bin Salman had his brother call Jamal Khashoggi, telling him that it would be safe for him to go to the embassy, and we know that 15 Saudis with bone saws were dispatched at the same time to meet him. And yet our President says that we don’t know for certain that Mohammed bin Salman was involved.

When asked about all of this today at Mar-a-Lago, where he’d gone to golf, Donald Trump said, “It’s a shame, but it is what it is.” He then added, “For me, very simple, America first. Saudi, if we broke with them, your oil prices would go through the roof.”

By the way, that’s Mohammed bin Salman at the top of this post, sitting in the Oval Office with Donald Trump in March of this year. During the meeting, Donald Trump said, “It’s a great honor to have the Crown Prince with us. Saudi Arabia has been a very great friend… we’ve become very good friends over a short period of time.” Of course, it hasn’t really been a short period of time. As we know, Donald Trump has a very long, profitable, and well-documented history with the Saudi royal family.

“I make a lot of money with them,” Donald Trump has said publicly of the Saudis in the past, adding “I love Saudi Arabia. The people are very nice to me. They buy my apartments like you wouldn’t believe. It’s true. They’ll pay me anything.” And, of course, it’s not just that, according to Trump, they bought $40 and $50 million apartments from him before he was elected president. He’s also continued to benefit from them at president, as they continue to spend great sums of money at Trump properties. So, if you’re wondering why, as Republican Senator Bob Corker put it so eloquently today, “(the) White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” I think we have a pretty good sense as to why that is. And I think, once the Democrats take control of the house on January 3, and start holding hearings, we’re going to know a whole lot more. [For a full list of Trump’s financial entanglements with the Saudis that we’re already aware of, click here.]

Interesting, Donald Trump isn’t always so reticent to take action against people. In fact, we just learned today that he attempted to use the Department of Justice to investigate his perceived enemies, like Hillary Clinton and James Comey. So, for what it’s worth, he is willing to use the U.S. government to go after women who send emails from private accounts, and men who he sees as being “nut jobs.” He just draws the line when it comes to going after dictators who kill innocent journalists for exercising their right to free speech as American residents.

I get that we’re addicted to oil, and that we feel as though we need a strong ally in the Middle East, but, as we were just saying yesterday, we also know that we need to make a break from oil if we want for humanity to survive. So this isn’t just a question of us not wanting to do business with a regime that we find morally repugnant. We know that we need to get away from them anyway if we want to survive. The product that they’re selling is quite literally killing us.

It’s like we just discovered that our crack dealer had our neighbor dismembered, and yet we’re sitting around trying to justify it, when we know, deep in our hearts, that we should be running into rehab, and looking to cut a deal with law enforcement.

But here we are, doubling down on the addiction, and making excuses for our dealer, instead of doing the right correct, moral, and responsible thing… which would be to cut off military funding to the Saudis, and initiate an aggressive transition to renewable energy.

I know it might make things rough for a while, but how about, for a start, taking this opportunity to throw the alternative energy switch in a big way, taking back that $1.5 trillion we gave to American’s most wealthy, and instead using it to fund alternative energy installations around the country? What about instituting aggressive tax breaks for people putting solar installations on their homes, and changing the laws to allow for people to seek energy back to the grid? And what about reinstitution those Obama era fuel efficiency standards that the Trump administration just recently scrapped?

One last thing. Let’s not forget that 15 out of the 19 hijackers who attacked our country on 9/11 were Saudis, and their government never paid a price for the role they played… I think there are ample reasons not to give them another chance here.

update: It’s now a few days later, and Trump continues to defend Mohammed bin Salman from the accusations of our intelligence community, in much the same way he defended Vladimir Putin from charges of having interfered in our 2016 election. “Whether he did it, or whether he didn’t,” Trump said of Mohammed bin Salman’s participation in the Khashoggi murder, “he denies it vehemently.” Our President then adds, “Do people really want me to give up hundreds of thousands of jobs? And frankly, if we went by this standard, we wouldn’t have anybody as an ally.” This, of course, is a lie.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

Make America Rake Again

By Mark | November 19, 2018

As of right now, 76 people are known to have died in the drought-stricken Sierra foothills of Northern California, where a wildfire, dubbed “Camp Fire,” has been burning for 10 days. As 1,276 people are still unaccounted for, this number is expected to rise considerably over the coming days, as the smoldering remains of over 10,000 homes, spread over approximately 149,000 acres, are examined by public safety officers. And, sadly, that’s not the only out-of-control wildfire raging in California right now. Just to the northwest of Los Angeles, the “Woolsey Fire,” fed by the similar forces, has already consumed 98,362 acres, taking the lives of 3 people, and destroying approximately 713 homes.

This is how the President of the United States responded to the crisis early on.

Instead of showing empathy for those who had lost loved ones, or commending the heroic efforts of firefighters, our President chose to take the opportunity to condemn the home state of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, a state that has continued to vote against him, threatening to cut off federal assistance, claiming that the people to California had brought this on themselves due to bad forestry management. [Speaking of California’s repudiation of Trump, it’s worth noting that every last Republican seat in Orange County flipped Democratic during last week’s midterm election.]

Thankfully, the backlash against Donald Trump was swift, harsh and unrelenting.

Shortly after Donald Trump posted the above statement, Brian Rice, the president of the California Professional Firefighters Association, responded with a letter, calling Trump’s comments “ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines.”

Others, at the same time, stepped forward to point out that, actually, contrary to what Donald Trump might think, only 3% of California’s 33 million acres of forest are owned and managed by state and local agencies, with 57% being owned and managed by the federal government, through the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. [The remaining 40% is owned by timber companies, private families and Native American tribes.]

And, as you might imagine, several experts issued statements about how ludicrous it was for the President to specifically call out forest management, while neglecting to mention the the undeniable link to climate change. As Noah Diffenbaugh, professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University, said to reporters yesterday, “We’re getting warmer and warmer conditions around the globe, but certainly here in California, and in the western United States we’re getting earlier melting of snowpack. That means that when those warm conditions happen in the summer and fall all the vegetation is even more dried out and that means that when lightning strikes when a spark from a from a car or a campfire hits the ground that the vegetation is more dried out there’s more fuel available.”

And, as the fires continued to rage, and the death toll continued to climb, the blowback against Donald Trump intensified, forcing him to fly to California yesterday to survey the damage himself, and meet with California leaders. While he apparently told these leaders that, contrary to what he’d tweeted, the federal government would continue to support California’s efforts to fight the fires, he continued to deny the role of climate change, which he’s referred to in the past as a hoax, and blame forest management procedures, going so far as to imply that this could have all been avoided with raking.

Here’s Donald Trump yesterday in Paradise, California… which he kept referring to as Pleasure, California… talking about how he’d heard from the President of Finland that “raking” can prevent disasters like this.

For what it’s worth, the President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, came out today and said that he “never mentioned raking” to Donald Trump.

In Trump’s defense, it is true that clearing underbrush, either physically, or through the use of controlled burns, can help lessen the damage of wildfires. It is also true, however, that it’s both ridiculous and offensive to suggest that, had people just “raked” California’s 33 million acres of forest, these people who died might still be with us. [There are 39.54 million people living in California, so that’s roughly one acre per person.] And it’s worth noting that, according to the New York Times, while prescribed burns have been utilized in the past, the cost of fighting fires over the past few years has taken money away from such preventative measures. “In recent years the Forest Service has tried to rectify its past forest-management practices by conducting more prescribed or ‘controlled’ burns to get rid of dead vegetation that could fuel future wildfires,” the Times reported. “But its budget has been overwhelmed by firefighting costs.” [I’ve heard it reported that clearing underbrush, if that’s what Trump meant by “raking,” costs approximately $5,500 acre, so we’re talking about billions of dollars annually.]

So, just to recap… Trump blamed the fires on the State of California’s forest management, when, in fact, most of California’s forests are owned and managed by the federal government, which has been spending less on preventative forest maintenance, and more on actual fire fighting. And we all know why that is, right? It’s because global climate change. And there’s really no question about it.

As Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory climate scientist Ben Santer just recently told the LA Times, what’s happening right now “isn’t a big scientific surprise.” These longer and more frequent heat waves, the higher nighttime temperatures, and the fact that record-setting hot days are outnumbering record-setting cold days by 5-to-1, are all things that he and other scientists predicted.

Donald Trump, however, apparently still isn’t convinced of the threat. After witnessing the devastation in California firsthand, he told reporters that his opinion on climate change has still not changed, adding, like the simpleton that he is, that he wants us to have a “great climate.”

I could go on, but I’ll just leave you with this simple thought… Every climate change denier needs to be run out of office, and it needs to happen right now… As the most recent report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states, we have to move aggressively, and do so right this minute, if we hope to avoid our present fate. [If you think the caravans from South America are bad now, just wait and see what happens if we don’t curb global climate change now.]

Here, for those of you who won’t read the report, is an excerpt from The Guardian.

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)… say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.

The half-degree difference could also prevent corals from being completely eradicated and ease pressure on the Arctic, according to the 1.5C study, which was launched after approval at a final plenary of all 195 countries in Incheon in South Korea that saw delegates hugging one another, with some in tears…

And we, of course, under Donald Trump, pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, choosing instead to double down on coal and fossil fuels. In fact, I was just reading that Donald Trump intends to name Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, to head the EPA… We, my friends, if you haven’t already figured it out, are living inside a death cult.

update: Clearly having learned nothing at all from his time surveying the damage in California, Donald Trump, now safely back at one of his golf resorts, is tweeting again about the “hoax” of global climate change.

Posted in energy, Environment, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

“Things innocent people would never say for $500, Alex”

By Mark | November 15, 2018

There’s a whole lot I want to say tonight, but I just don’t have the time. So I’ll just leave you to ponder these five tweets from President of the United States on your own.

OK, I take that back… I do have time for you…

If I had to guess, I’d say that we’re finally heading toward the long-awaited climax of this Shakespearean drama that we’ve all been unwittingly cast in, with Donald Trump and Robert Mueller moving all of their remaining pieces into position for the endgame. Having made the midterms about himself, and failing miserably, Donald Trump pushed out Attorney General Jeff Sessions, replacing him with the completely unqualified Matthew “masculine toilet” Whitaker, a known critic of the special counsel, who had speculated previously about how, as Attorney General, it would be relatively easy to defund the investigation into the President’s criminal activity into nonexistence. And, now, we’re hearing that avowed Trump defender Lindsey Graham will be taking over the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Department of Justice. While it’s not clear whether or not Trump arranged for the Graham’s ascension, it’s certainly a move that our increasingly unstable Commander-In-Chief would welcome, as word in Washington continues to swirl about a new round of indictments that will likely sweep up the likes of Wikileaks founder Julian Assenage, and Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi, getting one step closer to proving collusion with the Russians during the campaign. The question just seems to be when Robert Mueller and his team of elite prosecutorial witch hunters will pull the trigger, and whether or not the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr, and his 2016 campaign advisor, Roger Stone, will be targeted in this round. Given all this recent activity, I’d thought that word would have come out on Friday, but I guess Mueller’s decided to hold back a bit, perhaps wanting to see how Trump responds to the pressure.

So far, Trump, who supposedly just finished answering Mueller’s questions in writing with the help of his attorneys, doesn’t seem to be holding up well to the pressure. Not only did he meltdown on Twitter, sending out the above barrage of tweets about the Mueller investigation, after pretty much not mentioning the former FBI Director for the past two months, but, since his disastrous trip to France, word is that he’s retreated into a a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, lashing out everyone who gets into his way, and threatening to fire the likes of John Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen.

Oh, speaking of Trump’s recent chess playing, check out this idiotic attempt on his part to get Democrats to turn against Nancy Pelosi, the person who terrifies him most after Robert Mueller.

I know I’ve said it before, but, if I were a betting man, I’d say that Donald Trump’s finally gotten to a point where he’s in danger of losing his Republican support. For all that he’s said publicly about how he personally won races for Republicans during the midterms, the truth is that 36 people he personally endorsed lost their races. And, more importantly, suburban voters seems to be turning against the Republicans in a big way. And the same is true of young, white voters, who seem to be gravitating toward the Democratic Party, inspire of all the lies, and fear-mongering about terrorist caravans headed toward our border. And, when all was said and done, the Republicans lost the Midwestern states that gave Trump the presidency in 2016. So, one would think, the Republicans, as they’re heading into 2020, have to be thinking that now might be the right time to cut Donald Trump loose and explore their options. With that said, though, it doesn’t look as though Republican Senator Jeff Flake is getting much support in his attempt to rally conservatives to protect the Mueller investigation. Maybe that’ll change, though, with a few more indictments.

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 55 Comments

Ann Arbor votes for an unfunded downtown park over density and affordable housing

By Mark | November 14, 2018

Heading into the last election, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to local races. I, of course, did my research on the local candidates and ballot initiatives that I’d be voting on, but, for the most part, I focused on national races, trying, as best I could, to help the Democrats take back the House so that they might be able to provide a check against Trumpism, slowing the President’s attempts to pack the courts, and safeguarding what remains of the Affordable Care Act, among other things. And I suspect I was not alone. I think a lot of us were so preoccupied by the threat posed by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in the Republican Party, that we perhaps didn’t work as hard as we should have locally. In my case, here in Ypsi, I don’t feel as though my lack of involvement necessarily led to any adverse outcomes, as all of the initiatives that I voted for won. In Ann Arbor, though, there was something on the ballot that deserved a lot more attention than it got, and, in retrospect, I wish that I’d followed the issue more closely, and written about it here on the site.

I’m talking about Ann Arbor’s Proposal A — the grassroots campaign led by local activist Alan Haber to scuttle a deal made by Ann Arbor’s City Council to sell the parking lot on 5th Avenue, directly adjacent to the downtown library, to the Chicago-based developer Core Spaces for $10 million. Someone in Ann Arbor can correct me if I’m wrong, but, as I understand it, the development, had it gone forward, would have not only brought a 17-story mixed-use development downtown, significantly increasing density, but it also would have put $5 million dollars into City coffers for affordable housing, something which Ann Arbor has far too little of, as we’ve discussed here often. 53% of Ann Arbor voters, however, voted to support Proposal A, effectively killing the development, and ensuring that the property in question would remain undeveloped in perpetuity.

I’m not aware of any polling to show why people voted in favor of the ballot initiative. I suppose some people just liked the idea of a concrete public park downtown. [There can’t really be trees on the site, given that it’s above an underground parking garage.] Others, I’m sure, just didn’t like the idea of a 17-story building downtown. And, I suppose, some may have objected to the idea of $5 million going toward the construction of affordable housing, which would have happened, had the deal gone forward. A majority, however, probably weren’t aware of what was at stake, and just voted “yes” because, really, who wants to vote against a public park? Regardless of why, the people of Ann Arbor voted against affordable housing and against density, which, sadly, confirms a certain narrative about the city. And, regardless of whether or not uninformed voters made the difference, a good many of Annarbourites voted knowing that, 1) by killing the deal with Core Spaces, they would be opening the City up to costly litigation, 2) no money exists for the building or maintenance of another downtown park, and 3) the Core Spaces plan would have included a 12,000-square-foot public plaza, in addition to a hotel, apartments, retail spaces, etc.

Here, to give you and idea of what the people of Ann Arbor passed up, is one of the concept drawings put forward by Core Spaces.

For what it’s worth, I like the idea of downtown public spaces. I just don’t get how people could vote for a proposal that would have given them a downtown public space, while also making $5 million available for the development of affordable housing. [I heard it said that these funds could be leveraged to build up to 500 new affordable housing units in Ann Arbor.] Instead, they’re left with an barren concrete slab, and no money to build the beautiful downtown park that they’d dreamed of. [I heard it said that building a park on the lot would cost up to $15 million.] Again, I’m sympathetic. As someone who, at least for a while, fought for Ypsi to have a downtown commons, I get the impulse to preserve public space in the face of unyielding corporate expansion. I just don’t see how, given the facts as they were presented, Proposal A made any sense. I mean, the development would have created a 12,000-square-foot public plaza, and funded affordable housing. And, instead, Ann Arbor has nothing but a giant parking slab, that, I’m assuming, people will no longer be able to park on. As much as I respect Haber’s lifetime of work, I just don’t get it. It seems to me to be both provincial and short-sighted. But, maybe that’s just me… I’d vote for absolutely anything that increased affordable housing in Ann Arbor. [Oh, I also heard it said that the development would have generated $2.3 million in annual revenue for the City, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.]

As I mentioned above, we’ve talked a lot in the past on this site about the lack of affordable housing in Ann Arbor, and what this fact means to the people of Washtenaw County, as it ripples through everything from public education and the arts to health care and the economy. Here, for those of you who might be interested, are some links to a few of those discussions, which, I think, should provide some useful context for this vote on Proposal A.

• A message to the poor of Michigan… You don’t deserve to live in Ann Arbor, that’s what Ypsilanti is for

• “We’re seeing real consequences of growing inequity play out locally,” says Mary Jo Callan, director of the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development

• Annarbourites ask, “Why can’t Ypsi just take all of our poor?” Consultant explains

• New Harvard study shows Washtenaw County among worst places to grow up when it comes to social mobility

• How do we deal with the homeless in Ann Arbor? Easy, hire greeters on Segways to shoo them away… Introducing Ann Arbor’s new “Ambassador” program

• The desperate need for affordable housing in Ann Arbor, the story of the black history mural that brought the community together, and nudity on the radio… on episode 32 of the Saturday Six Pack

I could go on, but I’ve already given you a lot to sort through… In conclusion, I’ll just say that I’m disappointed in the people of Ann Arbor, who have once again shown us what they truly value, and it’s not the people who are being priced out of their city. Sure, as we touched on above, we might be able to blame the uninformed electorate for just voting “yes” to a public park, without thinking about the ramifications, but, given the history, I’m not inclined to give Ann Arbor the benefit of the doubt. The truth is, people fought to make this happen, and it wasn’t uninformed, first-time U-M students.

One last thing… Here’s the text of Proposal A.

Posted in Ann Arbor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 172 Comments

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