Mark Maynard | 2019

Barr, having perjured himself before Congress in order to help cover up the findings of the Mueller report, must be impeached

By Mark | April 30, 2019

On April 10, over a week before the Mueller report was finally made public, Attorney General William Barr testified under oath before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. During his testimony, Barr was asked whether or not Special Counsel Robert Mueller supported his conclusion, as articulated in the Attorney General’s now infamous 4-page memo, that Donald Trump was not guilty of any crimes. Barr responded that he “didn’t know” what Mueller thought of his conclusion.

Flashback: April 10.

VAN HOLLEN: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion. pic.twitter.com/vmwkmw3bcj

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 1, 2019

Well, today it became clear that Barr was lying under oath. According to reporting in the Washington Post, Mueller had written to Barr on March 27, three days after the Attorney General had issued his own highly-contested 4-page summary of the report, demanding that the non-classified summaries contained in the actual report itself be released. This, Mueller argued, was imperative, as the Attorney General’s 4-page overview, “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the report. In the letter, which the Post apparently has a copy of, Mueller went on to say, “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

So, when Barr testified on April 10, telling members of the Senate that he was not aware what Mueller thought of his 4-page summary, that was a bald-faced lie. Barr knew that Mueller thought that his “summary” had misstated the findings of the report, and that the Special Counsel wanted the actual non-classified sections of the report released. But it would appear as though Barr lied in hopes of keeping the actual report out of the hands of Congress for as long as possible, giving Donald Trump and his associates more time to advance their false “no collusion, no obstruction” narrative.

And now House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler is demanding answers. In a statement issued this evening, Nadler said, “The Special Counsel’s concerns reflect our own. The Attorney General should not have taken it upon himself to describe the Special Counsel’s findings in a light more favorable to the President. It was only a matter of time before the facts caught up to him.”

And the facts have indeed caught up to him. It is clearly evident that the Attorney General held back on the Special Counsel’s report for political reasons, giving Donald Trump several weeks to put his own spin on the inaccurate 4-page memo, and then lied to Congress under oath when asked if he knew the Special Counsel’s opinion of his approach.

Oh, and it’s also being reported today that Robert Mueller is willing to testify before Congress, but that Barr’s Department of Justice is stopping him from doing so.

Barr must be impeached.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Department of Justice, Donald Trump, impeachment, Jerrold Nadler, obstruction of justice, perjury, Russia, Russiagate, special counsel, William Barr | 21 Comments

Federal court rules that Michigan’s partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional

By Mark | April 30, 2019

This is Michigan’s 12th congressional district, where I live. It didn’t always look like this. There was a time, prior to the Republican redistricting of 2001-2002, when the borders of the 12th district pretty much formed a square. But that changed in the wake of the 2000 census, when the Republican majority in Lansing took the opportunity to redraw the boundaries not just of the 12th district, but of pretty much all of Michigan’s districts, looking at statewide voting patterns, and carving the state up to ensure a conservative majority in perpetuity. And that’s how we came to find ourselves living in this painfully contorted district that twists and lurches its way across southeast Michigan in hopes of capturing every single Democratic voter who might otherwise have made the surrounding districts more competitive for Republican incumbents.

As Karl Rove once said, “when you draw the lines, you make the rules.”

Gerrymandering, of course, wasn’t new in the early 2000s, but the Republicans took it to levels that no one had dared to attempt in the past. As The Nation reported at the time, “(A)ssuming support for the two major parties remains roughly constant, and assuming the Supreme Court does not step into the fray too aggressively, the 2001 redistricting in newly GOP-controlled Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, coupled with the ongoing power grab in Texas, Colorado and possibly Ohio, could give the Republicans up to twenty additional House seats in the next election. The cumulative impact of this change will make it far harder for the Democrats to secure a Congressional majority over the course of the next several election cycles.” And that’s exactly what happened. Without really attracting any new Republican voters, and in spite of demographic trends that favored the Democrats, the Republican Party picked up dozens of congressional seats, secured federal power, and used that power to slash taxes for the wealthy and strengthen the power of corporations. [The Republicans also fought to keep Democrats from voting, employing all kinds of voter suppression schemes, but we’ll talk about that side of the coin at another time.]

So, in this way, the Republicans held onto power in states where they saw their popular support dwindling. They carved up congressional districts, they closed polling places in areas that leaned Democratic, and they continued to do the bidding of wealthy industrialists, like the Koch brothers, who kept filling their coffers. But, eventually, people realized that they didn’t have to just accept this, as they had it within their power to use their state-wide popular vote majorities to pass ballot measures. And, in 2016, 61% of Michigan voters supported Proposal 2 — “Voters not Politicians” — to amend Michigan’s constitution in order to establish a 13-member independent redistricting commission.

While we’re still waiting to see how the “Voters not Politicians” legislation plays out (we’re hopeful that it will be transparent, fair and impartial, but who knows what it will look like in practice), Michigan’s current electoral maps are also being challenged in the courts, where League of Women Voters of Michigan has filed suit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

League of Women Voters of Michigan v. Benson was filed in federal court on December 22, 2017, and, on December 27, 2017, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan issued an order declaring that a three-judge panel would be convened to hear the case. The Republicans tried to stop it, but, last week, on April 25th, the three judges on the panel ruled unanimously that 34 congressional and state legislative districts in Michigan, including Michigan’s 12th congressional district, had been subject to partisan, unconstitutional gerrymandering that violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the plaintiffs… Following, from Ballotopia, are the districts in question.

Congressional districts 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12
State Senate districts 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 22, 27, 32, and 36
State House districts 24, 32, 51, 52, 55, 60, 62, 63, 75, 76, 83, 91, 92, 94, and 95

It should be noted that the decision was not only unanimous among the judges, but that one of those judges was an appointee of George H.W. Bush. [The three district court judges for the Eastern District of Michigan were; Eric Clay, Denise Hood, and Gordon Quist.] In issuing the decision, Judge Eric Clay said, “Today, this Court joins the growing chorus of federal courts that have, in recent years, held that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. We find that the Enacted Plan violates Plaintiffs’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights because it deliberately dilutes the power of their votes by placing them in districts that were intentionally drawn to ensure a particular partisan outcome in each district. The Enacted Plan also injures Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to association by discriminating against them and their political party and subjecting them to ‘disfavored treatment by reason of their views.'”

And these judges ruled not only that the districts be redrawn on or before August 1, 2019, but that special elections be conducted in 2020 for the Michigan State Senate districts noted above as well as the districts bordering them. This decision, as you might imagine, is also being challenged by Republicans. According to reports today, three Republican State Senators; Lana Theis (Brighton), Ken Horn (Frankenmuth), and Jim Stamas (Midland), appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

OK, I could go on, but that should give you an idea as to where things stand as of right now. I’ve heard that the Supreme Court is wary of getting involved in these recent gerrymandering cases, but we’ll see. This could be yet one more reason to bemoan the theft of the swing seat that was stolen from President Obama during his administration. We shall see.

One last thing… The attorneys for the League of Women Voters of Michigan, in making their case, presented testimony from George Washington University political scientist Christopher Warshaw, who had the following to say. The 2011 redistricting maps being considered in this case, he told the judges on the panel, produced a “more extreme partisan advantage in Michigan, in all three chambers, than in almost any other state in history over the past 45 years.” And, thanks to the hard work of a lot of incredible people, it may finally be coming to an end. [Donate to the League of Women Voters.]

Posted in Civil Liberties, Michigan, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged Denise Hood, Eric Clay, First Amendment, fourteenth amendment, gerrymandering, Gordon Quist, Jim Stamas, Jocelyn Benson, Ken Horn, Lana Theis, League of Women Voters, League of Women Voters of Michigan v. Benson, Michigan's 12th Congressional District, Proposal 2, special elections, voter suppression, voting rights | 3 Comments

They execute babies, don’t they?

By Mark | April 28, 2019

Yesterday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, after referring to leaders of the FBI and DOJ as “scum” and “dirty cops”, Donald Trump went on to reiterate the dangerous falsehood that, after women give birth in the United States, they have the option of killing the child. “(Babies are) wrapped in a blanket,” Donald Trump told the fired-up crowd, “(and then) the mother and the doctor decide whether to execute the baby.” This is not only far from true, but it’s an extremely dangerous lie — a lie that may very well cost health care workers their lives.

When Cesar "MAGA Bomber" Sayoc said that he was radicalized by Donald Trump, describing Trump rallies as "a drug", the President was not held accountable. What will happen now, when women's health clinics are targeted? Will we finally hold him responsible? pic.twitter.com/XwKjHHEsEX

— Mark Maynard (@MarkAMaynard) April 28, 2019

[If you want to know what really happens when babies die, I’d encourage you to read what Michigan nurse Julia Pulver had to say on the subject earlier today.]

We’ve known since 2016, when Donald Trump repeatedly incited violence on the campaign trail, going so far as to suggest a “second amendment” solution to keep Hillary Clinton from appointing federal judges, that he was a man who didn’t give a damn whether or not his rhetoric got people hurt or killed. And, sadly, the office of president hasn’t changed him any. He’s not only taken to calling members of the press “enemies of the people“, but he’s refused to tone down his irresponsible rhetoric on race, and disavow the white supremacists who praise him. At every turn, he courts those on the fringe, going so far as to say that some are “very fine people“, and feeds the paranoia of his most gullible followers, like so-called “MAGA Bomber” Cesar Sayoc, the man who mailed pipe bombs to journalists and Democratic leaders after becoming radicalized at a Trump rally. [Sayoc has since described Trump rallies, like the one last night in Green Bay, as “a drug”.]

The question that I have is whether or not people will ever hold Donald Trump accountable. Personally, I think it’s unlikely. If it didn’t happen when 50 people were killed in New Zealand by a man who citied Donald Trump as an inspiration, I don’t imagine that he’ll ever be held to account in any serious, meaningful way. But I guess we’ll see what happens when the first health care worker is gunned down by a lunatic ranting about how doctors “execute” babies. And, sadly, I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long.

Oh, and speaking of Trump rallies and rhetoric, check this out this March 22 headline from the Washington Post.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged abortion, call to violence, Cesar Sayoc, dirty cops, DOJ, enemy of the people, FBI, Green Bay, hate crimes, incitement to violence, infanticide, irresponsible rhetoric, Julia Pulver, MAGA, MAGA bomber, political violence, racism, rhetoric, scum, second amendment, Unite the Right, violent rhetoric, white nationalism, Wisconsin | 78 Comments

Maynard-Lao Archive: Item 0002 [Historic Ann Arbor Farmhouse Brass Doorknob]

By Mark | April 27, 2019

As I explained in an earlier post, I’m in the process of making my way through the house and separating the wheat from the chaff, determining which items will remain in our family archive, and which will be jettisoned into the ever-churning gyre of garbage that surrounds us. What follows is my justification for keeping the second item to find its way into the official archive.

TITLE: Historic Ann Arbor Farmhouse Brass Doorknob
ITEM NUMBER: 0002
BOX NUMBER: 1
DESCRIPTION: When I was an undergraduate, studying American Culture at the University of Michigan, I worked several jobs in Ann Arbor. I cooked at both The Brown Jug and Seva, and I had a work-study position at the Hands-On Museum. Well, a few years after I graduated, and moved back to the area from Atlanta, so that Linette could get her masters degree in Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University, I reconnected with folks at the Hands-On Museum, and joined the staff as the assistant to the Museum’s director. This, I think, would have been about 1995. And, over time, my position changed, as I started working more in marketing, communications, and fundraising. Well, at some point during my tenure as an employee at the museum, which was probably around two years in length, I proposed an idea for an historic archeology summer program… I’d been pushing the Director to establish a Hands-On History program for some time, to no avail, but she’d agreed to let me create a summer camp program, which I did with great enthusiasm. [Before transferring to the University of Michigan, I’d worked as an historic archeologist for a few years with Ed Rutsch, the renowned former President of the Society for Industrial Archeology, and, while I loved teaching kids about science, my first love was always American history.]

So I built a summer program that I was incredibly proud of. I contacted the Ann Arbor Fire Department, got them to give me access to an old farm site outside of town that they’d used several years before in a training exercise, and started thinking about how I’d best convey to kids the excitement of digging in the dirt, collecting clues as to what had happened on a site, and then coming up with theories as to who lived there, the kinds of lives that they had, etc. And, what I came with, I think, was pretty amazing. We walked the site, we talked about the history of Ann Arbor, we researched old insurance maps of the area, and we came up with a plan together as to where we’d dig, talking about the things we were likely to find. [I knew that we’d find quite a bit, as the Fire Department had told me that they’d torched the old farmhouse with everything in it. If I’m not mistaken, it was primarily an exercise for their arson investigators after the fact, although they also fought the fire.]

Anyway, this, I believe, is the only artifact that I kept. It’s an old, seemingly hand-made doorknob. I’m holding it in one hand now, as I type with the other, and I love the weight and feel of it. More so, though, I love the memory of what had to be the best educational experience of my life. I don’t know how many, if any, of those kids went into the fields of History or Archeology as adults, but I know, based on how early they showed up each day, and how hard they worked, that I made a positive impression on them. [For what it’s worth, the intern who worked with me on the project, who was in the UM Archeology program at the time, told me that she got more out of the experience than any class she’d taken in college, and that still makes me happy.]

I can’t remember much of what the kids discovered, but I think, by the end of the program, we’d identified the foundations of the buildings, exhumed the outhouse site (where the family would dump their broken dishes, bottles and such), determined that the house had burned, and identified the family how had lived there. As I recall, we may have even reached out to one of their descendants… Oh, and I distinctly recall finding quite a few pieces of silverware etched with the either the name of the UM hospital, or the old Ypsilanti State Mental Hospital. As I recall, our theory was that they must have fed their hogs refuse from the hospital, and that silverware occasionally made it into their troughs.

I should add that, several years after this, while working for a satellite communications startup in D.C., I went to the Smithsonian and applied for a job in their Hands-On History program. I got an offer, but ultimately decided not to take it, as I didn’t think that I could pay my bills on what I’d be making there. I don’t, as a rule, have a lot of regrets in life, given how things have turned out for me, but I do kind of wonder sometimes how things would have turned out if I’d stayed in D.C. and worked for the Smithsonian. [Also, I never got an official offer from The Henry Ford Museum, but, when I returned to Michigan in ’99, after a few years of working for tech companies in D.C. and LA, I applied for a position. As I recall, I’d gone in a few times to meet with them, and things were looking good, but, before they could make an offer, I’d taken another job.]

So, that’s why I’m keeping this old doorknob. It’s not just a cool, old artifact, but it’s a reminder of a great summer spent outside with smart, inquisitive kids, talking about local history. [I can still remember how fun it was, when someone would find something of interest — a broken section of a fieldstone wall, a piece of a clay pipe, an old kitchen appliance — and we’d all gather around to theorize as to what it meant. I miss having that in my life. I miss huddling around an 1897 Sears catalog, and trying to figure out what the things we were bringing up from the ground might have been.]

Posted in Education, History, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged 1995, American Studies, Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, archeology, arson, creative writing, Ed Rutsch, EMU, farmhouse, hands-on education, Hands-On History, Henry Ford Museum, historic archeology, historic artifacts, Linette Lao, Mark's chances to change history, Mark's jobs, Sears catalog, Seva, Smithsonian Institution, Society for Industrial Archeology, summer camp, teaching, The Brown Jug, University of Michigan, work-study, Ypsilanti State Mental Hospital | 9 Comments

Ten years of cool Ypsi-Arbor photos from Doug Coombe’s Concentrate archives

By Mark | April 24, 2019

Our friends at Concentrate are celebrating the publication of their 500th issue, and, as part of the festivities, staff photographer Doug Coombe has put together a collection of his favorite 300 photos. If you can get beyond the horror of watching me age over the past decade, it really is an incredible document, as it includes a lot of people who have done really incredible work in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti since about 2010, from bar owners (Jesse Kranyak: Wurst Bar) and farmers (Melvin Parson: We the People Growers Association), to artists (Jermaine Dickerson: Hero Nation) and entrepreneurs Lupe Quetglas: Ann Arbor Tortilla Company). If you have a minute, I’d encourage you to check it out… And, if you don’t have time to check out all 300, at least peruse Doug’s Top 25, which includes incredible photos like this one, accompanied by his memories of how the individual photos came to be.

Here’s what Doug has to say about this particular shot of me with my fellow Shadow Art Fair organizers Chris Sandon and Melissa Dettloff, taken in June, 2012: “I’m still amazed this photo happened and ran. Concentrate was doing a story on Shadow Art Fair, which ran as an alternative to the Ann Arbor Art Fairs from 2006 to 2013. Shadow Art Fair organizer Chris Sandon proposed doing a spoof of The Beatles’ infamous ‘butcher cover,’ which itself was a dig on Capitol Records’ shameless capitalism. As a huge Beatles fan I loved the idea. We did the photo shoot at night in Riverside Park. When I looked at the tiny back of my camera during the shoot I thought the shots looked great. When I downloaded them on my computer I realized they were way more disturbing than they looked on the back of my camera. Fortunately editor Jeff Meyers had a good sense of humor and has worked on a few horror films himself. This isn’t even the craziest photo from the night.”

And when Doug says that the above photo wasn’t the craziest one of the night, he wasn’t kidding… Here, to give you an idea of how the shoot went, is one of the shots from a little later in the series, as things began to go off the rails.