Awhile back, I added Sweet Juniper! to the blogroll and gave particular love to the haunting photos taken by that blog's proprietor, James Griffioen. The latest installment is jdg's story of returning to one of the decaying abandoned schools in Detroit and salvaging some books for his daughter and trying to get SOMEONE to do something about the offices filled with confidential student records...
I am haunted by what I found in one office: hundreds of file folders containing student psychological examinations complete with social security numbers, addresses, and parent information. I sat and thumbed through them. Many contained detailed histories of physical and sexual abuse, stories of home lives so horrifying I still can't get them out of my head: sibling rape, torture, neglect that defies belief. The detailed reports explained emotional impairments, learning disabilities. There was another box full of IEPs. The dates revealed that many of these students are still in the school system somewhere. I found several of their faces in the 2007 yearbook.
These aren't 20-year-old files, this is a school that just closed at the end of the 2007 school year. The names and stories belong to still-little kids shuffled to some other Detroit school.
His photos and a brief essay documenting those schools in Detroit appear in the U.K. magazine, Vice.
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This post tells about an afternoon James spent giving a TIME magazine reporter a tour of the city for a story...His Flickr page reveals that TIME then turned around and screwed him by hiring some NY photographer to come to Detroit and recreate his photographs. Assholes.
*Title of a fantastic Robert Plant song. After contemplating this story its hard for me to imagine a place that actually is...
Back in Southeast Michigan, today is Pączki Day. The long-time Polish community in Hamtramck section of Detroit has made its cultural tradition a regional gastro-phenomenon.
A pączki (pronounced poonch-key) is basically a big-ass doughnut of the gods. And as you may know, nobody likes doughnuts more than me.
My mouth is seriously wishing we were in Ann Arbor today. Perhaps Mrs F will attempt some homemade pączki?...One can dream...
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to felony charges Thursday in a sex scandal, forcing him out of office after months of defiantly holding onto his job leading the nation's 11th-largest city. "I lied under oath," Kilpatrick said in court.
[...] As part of Thursday's deal, the 38-year-old Democrat is to serve four months in jail and five years of probation. He also would pay the $1 million in restitution over the five-year probationary period, cannot run for any elected office for five years and loses his law license.
But wait! He could be Vice President! Waaay more people live in Detroit than all of Alaska, and Canada is right across the river!
It's too bad. Kwame was a young guy with talent and real potential. He was elected right after we moved to Michigan, and I recall thinking how cool it was that this 31 year old who celebrated his victory by "raising the roof" was elected mayor of an ascendant Detroit. He did some good things and had big plans but ended up squandering a great opportunity and abusing his position. He turned out to be a giant jackass, and deserves every bit of that punishment.
I mean, in the Democratic primary race, that is...
Saturday was the big meeting with the DNC to hopefully settle the clusterfuck that is Michigan and Florida and move the process along. One candidate discouraged supporters from attending or protesting and instead worked GOTV campaigns and registered thousands of new Democrats...The other campaign trained a spotlight on the hearing, called for protests in the streets and floated outrageous solutions to the situation, preemptively deeming anything less as "disenfranchisement" and "illegitimate."
Guess which was which...
So what ended up happening? If you listen Hillary Clinton or any of her official surrogates, Barack Obama button-holed the DNC into wresting away Clinton's nomination and have done democracy a grave disservice.
I mean, could this woman be wrong?
So, this weekend is less about what happened with the numbers (which were by and large unaffected) but what didn't happen with race as a whole. There was no resolution. There was no calming of the waters...no reaching for common ground or a sense that the party might be able to come together. Instead the Clinton machine is using one part of the two-state solution as a cause célèbre that the nomination was just stolen—to whip it's already frothy bitter-enders to the point when they stiffen—all because Obama got four of Hillary's delegates in Michigan.
I suppose when you are the Clinton camp and you think going into Saturday that you are entitled to not only ALL of your own delegates earned in an unopposed primary, but half the votes actually cast against you, coming out 69-59 is a pretty serious blow.
Initially, I was also confused at the number as well...the primary results should have netted Hillary 73 delegates, with "Uncommitted" the other 55. Where was this 69-59 split coming from? The Clintonites were blaming Obama, Dean and the DNC—claiming the fix was in. But I knew those numbers sounded like the compromise solution pitched previously by the Michigan Democratic Party.
So what were the Clintonites freaking out about? Four delegates? when she trails by triple-digits, and there are only forty more delegates outstanding?
But, for that matter, why didn't Obama just let her have 'em. Surely those four delegates are even less consequential to him, and hardly worth the bad press? I had to simply trust his judgment—so far, every time I've second-guessed his strategy, he's turned out to be right, and outplayed the Clintons.
Because, as it turns out, it's not about the four delegates—they ARE inconsequential—it's about what those delegates could be extrapolated to mean. Nate Silver* at fivethirtyeight.com explains...
Obama actually had the votes on the Rules & Bylaws Committee to earn an even delegate split out of Michigan. But instead, he deferred to Carl Levin's 69-59 plan. How come? Because the delegate margin isn't close enough to matter, and giving Clinton some kind of a "win" in Michigan will help to undercut the perception that delegate shenanigans caused the nomination to be stolen from her.
It might be asked: why not instead sign off Clinton the 73-55 delegate split that her campaign desired? It's only a difference of a few delegates.
Well, if you did that, you'd be reflecting the Clinton/uncommitted preference from the unsanctioned primary. Which means that you'd be tending to legitimate the results of that primary. Which means that Clinton would have had a stronger claim for including Michigan in her popular vote count. And the popular vote count is different way that Clinton has tended to imply that Obama's nomination is not legitimate.
I suspect if Clinton had not decided to take the party down in flames, Obama would've let her have the delegates and the "win."
But he, wisely, realized that if Clinton could use the 73-55 delegate math to "legitimize" the results of the primary, she could continue to use the MI results in her popular vote math—dishonestly of course, because she calculates the state at 328,000 to 0—but it's exactly what would happen. None of the delegates apportioned Saturday would actually get Clinton anywhere within shouting distance of Obama among pledged delegates...The reason the Clinton camp is so upset is that it was all about being able to use their creative accounting to declare her the popular vote winner to convince superdelegates that she must be the nominee...
But waitasec—are there even enough unpledged superdelegates left to close the gap? to do that Clinton needs 80% of the remaining unpledged superdelegates. And after this Tuesday many will hop off the fence after the last primaries—Obama will likely have reached the official number to clinch the nomination.
So this is over right? These are just three-day death throes from Clinton's campaign?
No.
"One thing about superdelegates is that they can change their minds," [Clinton] said aboard her plane in Puerto Rico before taking off for South Dakota.
She also said she is not committed to accepting the new 2118 delegate threshold for winning the nomination. "That's a question we will be considering," she said.
She continued to argue that she leads in the popular vote count — the way she counts it — and said "I have put together a much broader coalition" of voters than Obama.
The math never stops evolving, and the goalpost never stop moving. Even if Obama clinches the nomination tomorrow with wins in South Dakota and Montana, and asa result picks up another wave of supers, Hillary won't count them as final votes until the convention.
So, unless she surprises us with a level of class, grace, and regard for anything but herself she has yet to display, it appears she will take this bullshit the distance—to a floor fight in Denver. Nearly three months from now.
*If you've been reading the excellent analysis by "Poblano" at fivethirtyeight.com, it's now been revealed that he is Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus fame (non-fame). As in baseball, Nate has forgotten more about elections minutiae than I'll ever know, so check it out.
Of course, the issue isn't the four delegates. The Clinton campaign made clear a long time ago that they don't view this as a delegate fight. Not since she lost the lead in delegates. Now, they view it as a popular vote fight.
Had the DNC handed out delegates based on January's sham vote, it would've ratified the election as a legitimate one (as ended up happening with Florida, by the way). Hillary and her acolytes would've then had a greater claim to her Michigan "victory" of 328,309 votes to zero for Obama. As is, at the Michigan Democratic Party's insistence, the DNC threw out the election and invented a new split out of thin air. Obama had the votes on the committee for a 50-50 split, but threw Clinton a few extra delegates to try and ease bruised feelings.
But again, Clinton doesn't give a damn about those extra delegates. She wanted to ratify the Michigan election and claim that 328,309-vote advantage for her tally.
So when you see Clinton surrogates in a rage about those "four delegates", understand that their rage has nothing to do with four delegates. It has to do with the blow it dealt to their propaganda efforts.
UPDATE 2: Edited slightly for length and clarity—can't you tell?
Today is Primary Day in Michigan. Some last minute scrambling yesterday on a local Obama email list netted me an official "Obama'08" yard sign, and I stayed up late making my own custom sign to remind voters what to do at their polling place...
I'm pleased with the results. My house is on a busy street a block from the high school, so it's pretty prime placement.
I'm off to vote at lunch, I'll report back later... If "Uncommitted" beats Hillary, I will do a fucking jig.
UPDATE: Voted at lunch. Fastest polling time ever. No line at all, had to fill out the request for the party ballot and then one circle to color in on the ballot, that's it. They said turnout has been good for a primary day, but they expect a much busier evening. The snow messed things up in the morning.
I'm glad I did my sign. Hopefully it informs some people as they approach the school, since there were no signs or explanations anywhere to be seen about the "Uncommitted" issue, and the ballot wording is confusing on the "write-in" section. I have no doubt that many, many Obama and Edwards votes will be wasted in that spot, which is too bad, as Hillary is the benificiary of that.
Interesting note: this area beyond the restricted boundary is usually a two-foot tall forest of cardboard and wire, today there was but one sad and lonely sign...
EterniaMichigan is having it's primary on January 15th next year. That's one week after New Hampshire. Unless something dramatic happens with California or Florida, it now makes the Michigan primary, arguably, the most important early test for the candidates.
The whole presidential primary system is complex, and I don't pretend to fully grasp how it works. But that's mostly because I've never lived anywhere where it mattered. In 2004, the Michigan caucus was in mid-March, and Kerry was already running away with it. My Dean vote was merely symbolic—it didn't mean anything.
Not this time. Michigan is in play, and that means candidates will be coming here to press flesh—good, and bombard me with advertising—bad. All I can say, is I cannot wait to vote, and have it matter. And that's (probably) bad news for Hillary.
