• completion of work on Barrier 2B;  

• full power operation of Barrier 2A (currently operating at half power);  

• installation of a physical barrier to prevent carp, detected in the nearby Des Plaines River, from entering the Chicago Sanitary and Shipping Canal during periods of flooding; and 

• making the CSSC a priority as the Corps of Engineers studies a range of options and technologies to prevent the transfer of aquatic invasive species.   

ruling drastically cuts Blue Cross proposed rate increase on seniors

November 7, 2009

By Cole Waterman

LANSING -- An estimated 200,000 Michigan seniors may soon be able to breathe a little easier, after a Friday preliminary ruling has reduced Blue Cross's proposed increase for Medigap insurance from 36.7 percent to 3.8 percent, reports the office of Attorney General Mike Cox.

Yesterday, an administrative law judge at the Michigan Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation made preliminary ruling, stating Blue Cross must subsidize Medigap rates by a full $181 million.

Click here to read the full story.

John Freeman spoke to a small group in Oakland County last night. He discussed the need for fundamental change to deal with Michigan's state, county and local financial problems and stressed the need to diversify and rebuild our state's economy. He outlined his goals in several critical areas--

--A strong economy and making Michigan a place where businesses can thrive is of primary importance but will not be achieved by gutting our school budgets, weakening environmental laws and forcing employees to cut their wages.

--Building a world class education system is essential to attract jobs to the state. Every child should have access to quality, affordable higher education

--Changing how we govern by opening up the process more widely and engaging the public

--Reforming health care is urgent because 1.1 million people in Michigan are without health care insurance and because our business are at a competitive disadvantage under our current broken health system.

--Modernizing our infrastructure--roads, mass transit, improved broadband Internet access

--Securing our natural resources and leading the green revolution.

Freeman is currently traveling the state to increase his name recognition. Raising campaign funds is a also a challenge. He served six years in the legislature during the Engler administration and was term-limited out. Since then he has been active politically in a successful campaign to raise Michigan's minimum wage, the Michigan Home Care Campaign and is currently state director of Health Care for America Now.

Freeman's remarks were followed by a lively discussion.

4-18-09 John D. Cherry is expected to be the Democratic nominee for Governor in next year's election. Despite his considerable solid experience in various Michigan public posts including State Representative, State Senator and Senate minority leader, he suffers from the sagging Michigan economy and low opinion poll ratings of Governor Granholm in whose shadow he has remained as her Lieutenant Governor. Unless the Michigan economy strengthens before the election Cherry will have his work cut out for him in the election next year. Democratic State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith is set to announce her candidacy for governor on June 29. Other possible Democratic nominees include former state lawmaker John Freeman who announced on July 23 and possible candidates House Speaker Andy Dillon and Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano.

9-16-09 Bouchard picks Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land as running mate for 2010 governor's race.

Land was Kent County Clerk from 1992-2000 and was first elected secretary of state in 2002. She was reelected to a second term in 2006, but is prohibited from running again because of term limits.

The announcement today gives Bouchard the geographical and gender balance to a ticket.

9-6-09 Four Republican Candidates Agree to Debate on September 26 on Mackinac Island

Oakland County Sheriff, Mike Bouchard, Attorney General Mike Cox, Congressman Pete Hoekstra and Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder will debate on September 26 at the Republican Leadership Conference on September 26. The debate will be moderated by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson with panelists Kathy Hoekstra (not relation to Peter Hoekstra) of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal and Free Press editorial page editor, Stephen Henderson.

4-18-09 Attorney General Mike Cox and Congressman Peter Hoekstra are being mentioned as GOP candidates, and Oakland County sheriff Mike Bouchard announced his candidacy June 3. Cox appears to be more moderate than Hoekstra who is a conservative from Michigan's west coast who supported most of of George Bush's policies. He voted against providing an extension of unemployment compensation benefits last fall and against the Obama economic recovery bill in 2009. Mike Cox is not vulnerable to being tagged for the errors of the George W. Bush administration. On June 25 Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land announced she would not run for governor and her support for Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.

Op-Ed: George an underdog with gumption

Sen. Tom George, of Kalamazoo, has yet to generate the bucks and buzz of more prominent contenders for the 2010 Republican nomination for governor. But he has credentials and gumption.

By GEORGE WEEKS
Syndicated Columnist

Sen. Tom George, of Kalamazoo, has yet to generate the bucks and buzz of more prominent contenders for the 2010 Republican nomination for governor. But he has credentials and gumption.

Gumption was evident last week when he managed to reverse the arrogant decision of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, initially accepted by the state party, to bounce him from the Sept. 26 gubernatorial debate at the Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island.

It's bizarre that the party would give to an outside organization the power to determine who could participate in a party function. In excluding him, the anti-tax alliance cited time limitations and, essentially, George's failure to click with the media.

After his eviction, George got on the horn to Republican State Chairman Ron Weiser and two GOP contenders, Congressman Pete Hoekstra, of Holland, and Ann Arbor businessman Rick Snyder.

George said the three helped in the reversal. In fact, Snyder Campaign Manager M. Dane Walters wrote Weiser: "This upcoming debate and the Republican Party should not be perceived as exclusionary or preferential. Without assurance that Senator George has been invited, we will seriously reconsider whether Rick Snyder should participate as well."

George was particularly grateful to Weiser in assuring that "fairness prevailed" at this early stage of the Republican primary fight, where George is a long shot to outpoll well-known and media-savvy contenders Hoekstra, Attorney General Mike Cox and Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. He lacks the resources and impressive staffing of the wealthy Snyder.

George, 52, is a former state representative who was elected to the Senate in 2002, and is well qualified to contribute to the current debate on health care. He's a medical doctor; past president of the Michigan Society of Anesthesiologists; and past director of Hospice of Greater Kalamazoo.

In fact, when I connected with him by phone Friday, he was in his scrubs waiting to deal with a couple of patients at one of the Kalamazoo hospitals where he practices when the Legislature is not in session.

"I'm a doctor," he said, "I know health care."

He also knows history, being past president of the Historical Society of Michigan and producer of the 1993 award-winning television documentary "Lincoln in Kalamazoo." So I was interested in his comments on Gov. Jennifer Granholm's ill-advised move to scatter the state's historical functions to the winds as part of her executive order to dismantle the Department of History, Arts and Libraries (HAL) at a claimed savings of $2 million.

George says that the way Granholm configures the functions, the state's push for "cultural tourism" would suffer.

While she has modified some aspects of her original action, George correctly says the current well-coordinated and effectively functioning operation of the Michigan Historical Center, which includes the Michigan Historical Museum and the State Archives, would "lose synergy."

Michigan has a huge budget problem. But not so huge as to make history of history.

Her order transfers some, but not all, of the Historical Center's functions to the Department of Natural Resources. The DNR is well set to administer museums. But the state archives?

Richard Fidler, a board member of the Traverse Area Historical Society, contends that the Historical Center "would be sacrificed" in order to have more funding available for the proposed Michigan Center for Innovation and Reinvention at Michigan State University that emphasizes technology and science as favored by Granholm.

He said: "Closing and moving historical resources from the present Michigan Library will not save the state money. On the contrary, it will cost the state more, not less, to support a new institution."

Click here for the original article in the Traverse City Record Eagle.

Posted: 9/14/2009

• Michael Bouchard: a landslide loser statewide in 2006, he is dogged by allegations of a pay to play system of contracts for political contributions in the OaklandCounty sheriff's department.
• David Brandon: the CEO of Domino's, the company featured in an infamous YouTube video in which employees do disgusting things to the food. This is good management?
• Mike Cox: chose a strange way to admit infidelity and he may have covered up the infamous ManoogianMansion party.
• Pete Hoekstra: a staunch supporter of George Bush's policies which have devastated Michigan.
• Terri Land: has so badly managed the Department of State that a recent Auditor General's report found that cash could be stolen at branch offices and that tens of thousands of drivers have been charged the wrong vehicle registration fees.
• Rick Snyder: Gateway, the company Snyder cites to demonstrate his business experience, outsourced thousands of American jobs to Communist China while he was a director of the company.

Bouchard Eager to Leave OaklandCounty in a Lurch

Frequent candidate and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard announced today that he is running for Governor of Michigan, instead of spending his time protecting the citizens of OaklandCounty. He wants the people of OaklandCounty to once again pay him to run for statewide office, instead of doing the job to which he was recently elected.

"Mike Bouchard should know that when the economy is in a recession, crime goes up; OaklandCounty’s jail is overflowing and well beyond capacity. This is not the time to close the South Oakland County Jail, or the Oakland County Boot Camp, which has been shown to greatly improve the behavior of inmates and allow them to become productive members of society. Furthermore, it is irresponsible to cut and run with partisan political ambitions instead of resolving long-standing crises from his watch.

In 2006, after getting in and out of the race for U.S. Senate, Bouchard lost in a statewide landslide to Senator Debbie Stabenow. He was even unable to come close to carrying his historically Republican home county in that election, losing OaklandCounty soundly.

[From the Oakland County Democratic Party 6-3-09.]

Michigan is an odd state politically and its heavy voting for Obama should not be considered as a sign of usual activity as McCain pulled his campaign out of the state, heavily Democratic Wayne County continues to bleed population, and incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm is pretty disliked for raising business taxes. So let's get to the candidates, as the declared candidates are all Democrats at this point so the Republicans listed are either potential or likely (likely in the cases of Land, Cox, Hoekstra, and possibly Patterson):

Democratic Candidates:

Lt. Governor/Ex. State Senator John Cherry: He's Granholm's Lt. Governor and has had a pretty wide leeway in terms of things he's been involved in, which is good as I've heard solid reports of him in terms of policy. There are 2 negatives though in that 1. He's Granholm's LG, and Granholm is not particularly well-liked. 2. He's from the Genessee COunty region which doesn't give him the best geographic base (Blanchard & Granholm came from Wayne County, Engler came from Kent I believe though Bill Milliken came from Traverse City so anything is possible).

Republican Candidates (likely but not formally declared)

Secretary of STate Terri Lynn Land: Twice elected statewide Land is term-limited and doesn't really have anywhere to go. I will say that I've heard nice things about how she's run the Sec State office (and, in a somewhat rare occurance for a Sec State office held by a Republican I've never heard any allegations of shennanigans during her tenure). She's well liked and been elected statewide, so she has a better chance to actually win than a lot of Republicans.

Attorney General Mike Cox: He's also been elected twice statewide but he's somewhat controversial and is damaged among religious fundamentalists due to the revelation that he's had an affair.

Retiring Congressman/ex-business executive Peter Hoekstra: He's well known among the Western portion of the state and his retirement indicates that he's fairly likely to run as he's still relatively young for a politician. I don't know that he'd do any better than any other former Republican Congressman who've run for Governor though (Bob Beauprez in Colorado, Jim Nussle in Iowa, I believe there was one in Wisconsin also).

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson: The 72 year old Patterson was thought to be pretty much finished, having the Oakland County Executive office for as long as he wanted but pretty much done as far as moving up. Then, earlier this month, Patterson started circulating the idea of running for Governor (including novelty wine bottles with the idea). Patterson bring a number of positives and more than a few negatives to his run for Governor. On the positive side of the ledger Patterson is now relatively moderate in terms of his culture positions (feuding with MI Republican kingpins the Devos family over the direction of the party), has a good record economically in the county (the only county in Michigan which has maintained a AAA bond rating, and he founded the "Automation Alley" consortium to bring higher tech positions to the state), and he's been in charge of the state's second largest county since 1992. On the negative side of the ledger there's "Brooks the person" type of issues including a controversial traffic stop in the early 2000s (he pled guilty of "careless driving" but the officers who stopped him never gave him a breathalyzer test, and the impression people seem to have is that he would have failed one) and he's made some politically insensitive comments about the predominantly African American Detroit City Council during a dispute. If he makes it through the primary he's a threat in the general election as he is someone who can honestly make the claim to having helped his county navigate this brave new economy somewhat successfully and Michigan is hurting economically, badly (enough so that I think they'll overlook Patterson's...issues if he makes it through the primary).

This is a pretty crowded field but there are a few other Republicans thinking about running for Governor
Congressman Mike Rogers
Dominos Pizza CEO/Ex-University of MIchigan Regent David Brandon
Oakland County Sheriff/Ex-State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bouchard
State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop