THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

BIG SISTER'S SLICE-AND-DICE-THE-BABIES-FOR-SCIENCE PROPOSAL NEARLY ON THE BALLOT

OK, OK.  I'll admit the headline is a little loaded, but it got your attention, right?

Our thanks to Nick DeLeeuw of RightMichigan.com for staying on top of the Michigan Citizens for Stem Cell Research and Cures (MCSCRC) ballot initiative that would allow researchers to vivisect, mutilate, and kill embryonic human beings to harvest their stem cells.  Nick covers all the solid facts that people have no excuse for not knowing on such a fundamental issue -- excepting, of course, the so-called progressives like MCSCRC who never let a fact get in the way of their plans to run/ruin our lives -- so we invite you to check out his article on the moral, scientific, and policy arguments against the MCSCRC initiative.

Nick's update on this initiative ties in with the story we broke last fall about Big Sister a.k.a. Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell stumping for the MCSCRC cause.  We took note of Heartwell's speech before the group, because he had made a show during his re-election campaign of staying silent on abortion and the other life issues.  He had claimed his silence was a consequence of the irrelevance of these issues to the office of mayor, when in fact it was a crass political calculation to keep his pro-abortion position under wraps to suppress the turn-out for his pro-life challenger in the mayoral primary race.  However, once that strategy worked to win the election, Heartwell used the prestige and influence of his "irrelevant" mayoral office to support the MCSCRC initiative.

But then Heartwell is the most advanced sort of progressive.  Not only does he not let the facts get in the way of his political agenda, he doesn't let integrity get in the way either.

G.R. COMMISSIONER WANTS CITIZEN WORK GANGS TO REPAIR POTHOLES

Yesterday the Grand Rapids City Politburo -- I mean, Commission -- met and discussed the potholes that are reducing our streets to rubble and our cars to wrecks.  There was the usual griping that city apparatchiks haven't confiscated enough of the bourgeoise's wealth to pay for capitalistic excesses like pothole repairs.  So, Second Ward Commissar David LaGrand proposed a corvee!  Yes, a corvee, labor exacted in lieu of taxes to build or repair highways.

I kid you not, folks.  WOOD TV-8 News reported that LaGrand recommended giving local residents a shovel and a bucket of tar to repair our potholed streets.  Nothing like a bit of old school workers' paradise to fix a problem that the government is too incompetent to remedy.  Heck, if the Soviets managed to bring in the harvest by hustling people out of their offices and factories into the countryside to do what the state collectives couldn't get done, why not give it a try in River City?

No doubt LaGrand would object that he was calling for volunteers.  Well, I'll go along with that so long as payment of city taxes is also voluntary.

BIG SISTER'S BIG SPOON ...

... to stir the racial pot with.

At least that's how Nick DeLeeuw of RightMichigan.com, our local pundit on Michigan politics, characterizes G.R. Mayor Heartwell's criticism of the city's new chief of police.  Nick got it right, even when he goes as far as to describe Big Sister's bloviating as "racist".  Heartwell is ticked off that City Manager Kurt Kimball chose the white guy instead of the black guy to serve as the next police chief.  Big Sister's reason is that Kimball blew an opportunity to restore racial harmony in River City by not making the politically correct pick for the top cop slot.  Well, I wasn't aware that the city was embroiled in racial strife, unless you count the race-mongering of the professional grievance industry.  I don't.

You see, folks, the lack of racial harmony in Grand Rapids is a phony and pernicious issue.  It is predicated upon the false primacy of race:  We are nothing but creatures of our skin color captive to the accidents of our birth.  Our individuality, the actual source of what unites and divides us, is obliterated in favor of collectivizing each of us into one arbitrarily designated tribe or another.  Our dignity, which wells up from the word written upon all of our hearts, disappears through this dark lens of racial politics which lets the race-mongers strip us of our humanity and force each of us into stereotypes of victim and victimizer that only a Great White Hope like Heartwell -- correction, Heart-less -- can transcend to bring peace to the community.

Meanwhile, all of our government officials have a great excuse for not doing their jobs.  Most recently we have seen this in public education:  Racial discord arising from deep-seated and institutionalized white bigotry against blacks and other minorities becomes the underlying reason why the Grand Rapids Public Schools fail to perform.  Racism is why black and brown students don't learn.  Of course, the real reason is broken families and bad parenting, which can be the ruin of any kid regardless of skin color.  But that's not a problem the government can fix and so take an ever-increasing bite out of our paychecks.  More telling, it leaves no ground upon which a sanctimonious moralizer like Heartwell can proclaim his progressive mutlicultural enlightenment in contrast to us benighted middle-class working-stiff bigots.

So our public servants stick to the racial discord storyline to the exclusion of the truth.  It gets them off the hook for their failures while providing a rationale to make even bigger claims upon our resources.  But it only works if we buy into the canard that our city is a festering pit of bigotry.  Moreover, to believe Heartwell's cant, we have to buy into the genuinely racist idea that whites will respect the law regardless of the skin color of the police chief but blacks will do so only if he is black.  Therefore, as Nick wrote, it is Heartwell who is the racist in playing racial politics over the city's new top cop.

Those of us who are sick and tired of the corrosive politics of race must call out Big Sister on this.

DESIGNING BUREAUCRATS

Just to be clear, I think the law of firm of Warner Norcross & Judd is a band of bandits.  So I'm shedding no tears for these shysters, having lost their grip on the city government after the departure of Boss Logie and now getting slammed by the Grand Rapids Planning Commission last week.

Nevertheless, I must say that the Planning Commission's denial of Warner Norcross's request for additional street level signage on the Fifth Third Building downtown was obnoxious.  It appears that certain members of that commission -- i.e., Shaula Johnston -- don't get what their public mandate is.  The Planning Commission has no authority to design what we build in River City.  They really don't even have the authority to plan it.  What they do have the authority to do is approve or deny projects based upon city ordinances.

For example, Warner Norcross asked the Planning Commission to approve erecting new signs with its name and logo at its main offices in the Fifth Third Building.  However, city ordinance limits the total amount a commercial signage permitted on a site, and the on-site signage for just Fifth Third Bank alone already excceeded that amount.  So Warner Norcross had to make the case that a special hardship existed that would make the application of the ordinance unjust and allow the Planning Commission to use its lawful discretion to exempt the law firm's signage from the ordinance.

Apparently the Planning Commission did not find a special hardship -- no doubt because Warner Norcross has been headquarted in the same building for four decades with no one having trouble finding the firm -- and denied the request.  So far, so good.  Whether or not the signage ordinance is good public policy, the Planning Commission has to make its decision based upon it.

That seems to elude Commissioner Johnston who was offended by the very fact that Warner Norcross had made this request.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, Johnston excoriated the law firm for proposing signs with its logo as "unclassy".  O, the horrors of a business wanting its logo on advertising!  Then the thoroughly estimable commissioner added, "I feel it's offensive that [Warner Norcross] think they're so special that they need something different."  Different?  Oh, that's right.  How odd that a business would want its sign on the building it's located in.

As for Warner Norcross thinking it's special, well, that IS the case a petitioner has to make when asking for an exemption from a city ordinance.  To be offended by that is to be offended by the very process of petitioning the Planning Commission.  One wonders how Johnston endures in her post with all those "offensive" petitioners submitting their "unclassy" designs to her.

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS, PART TWO

Yesterday on Thanksgiving, the Grand Rapids Press published a letter from Dan Tietema, local businessman, former candidate for the Grand Rapids City Commission, and occasional contributor to L.A.W.  In a few paragraphs Dan did an excellent job of exposing Mayor George Heartwell for the political chameleon he is.  He will tell you whatever you need to hear to get elected, but once in office the leopard doesn't change his spots, however well he covers them during the campaign -- as we noted recently here.

Here is what Dan had to say:

In just a few short weeks after winning re-election, Mayor George Heartwell has strategically shifted his well-publicized, bipartisan, and pro-business approach to local government back to the partisan progressive liberal that he is accustomed to.

Already, he had advised fellow commissioners to draft a resolution to end the war in Iraq, urged state representatives to create new revenues, and called Eric Larson, head of the anti-tax group Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility, recall efforts "deplorable" and "self-serving".  The group opposes legislators who supported the newly added taxes placed on small business in a down economy.  Our mayor has also been supporting embryonic stem-cell research in Michigan.

The issues that need attention are plentiful and the mayor should stop wasting city resources promoting his personal agenda and spend more time addressing the areas that can improve the quality of life in our community.  Repairing damaged roads, fixing a broken budget, and restoring the necessary services is what an elected non-partisan mayor should be focused on when representing the fine citizens of Grand Rapids.

We deserve more than just campaign promises.  I urge those who endorsed the mayor's candidacy, including various religious leaders, prominent businessmen and women, and the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, to take a stand now and demand that the mayor redirect his priorities and begin concentrating on the interests that are specific to Grand Rapids.

Dan's got Big Sister's number.  Hizzoner indulges himself by using the mayoral office as a vanity vehicle for leftist posturing on national issues marginal or even irrelevant to the business of keeping River City a decent place to live and work in.  Thumb's up, Dan!

G.R. PLANNING COMMISSIONERS TURN TYRANT

At last Thursday's Grand Rapids Planning Commission meeting, Commissioner Shaula Johnston led the charge against the outlaws of Aquinas College who (shudder) wanted to build a new dormitory partly clad in vinyl siding.  According to the G.R. Press, Johnston found vinyl to be "offensive".  She declared that a building with it "doesn't look like an Aquinas dorm".  She wanted the entire exterior to be brick instead of partly so.  Then she chided Aquinas College for being "overly concerned" with construction costs.

Those bastards at Aquinas College!  Who do they think they are?  The law must be obeyed, and the law doesn't let property owners choose what materials they will build with.  You don't have that right.  That's the prerogative of Planning Commissioner Johnston and her colleagues.

Oh wait.  Actually, outside of a few special districts, the law doesn't say that.  The law doesn't care if Johnston thinks vinyl is offensive because it doesn't fit the look of other dormitories on the Aquinas campus.  (As though the drab mid-century architecture of those buildings is something to celebrate.)  It's not her call.  What is offensive is a petty bureaucrat like Johnston taking a petitioner to task over a concern for cost when she is not writing the check for the baubles she wants added to a project.

Even more offensive is that three other planning commissioners overstepped their authority to join Johnston in ordering Aquinas to use brick instead of vinyl regardless of the expense.  So remember, you may have title to your property, and you certainly have to pay the taxes on it, but with power-grabbing bureaucrats like Johnston and her ilk, don't think you actually own it.  Also remember, this is why city elections like last Tuesday's matter.  Who do you think appoints these tin pot dictators to the Planning Commission?

BIG SISTER AND LITTLE SISTER IN CROSSTOWN SCRAMBLE ON ELECTION NIGHT

If anyone had a doubt who Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell and his acolyte City Commissioner Rosalynn Bliss were backing in the Second Ward race, they let the cat out of the bag on election night last Tuesday.  Big Sister and Little Sister were partying with fellow PWAista Ruth Kelly at her campaign gala at Toxic Towers when the bad news began trickling in.  Kelly's opponent, David LaGrand, was drubbing her at the polls.  In fact, LaGrand ended up winning 60% of the vote.  By the middle of the evening, the Sisters got a clue and hustled over to LaGrand's house to congratulate him on his victory.

Perhaps Heartwell and Bliss don't get it and so found themselves in the wrong place on election night, but I think abortion politics (or more comprehensively, the culture of death issues) are playing a bigger role in municipal elections.  Maybe not directly in that a pro-choice candidate for city office can no longer expect any support from pro-life voters.  Rather, voters are losing their patience with the deceptions of closet pro-choicers, especially after the publicity surrounding Heartwell's ill-received direct mailing to Catholic voters during the mayoral race.

It may well be that Kelly's coyness about her stand on abortion, hinting that she may have picked up the Right to Life endorsement if she has chosen to pursue it after having gotten the nod from the pro-abortion Progressive Women's Alliance, was too much for many Second Ward voters to swallow.  She probably would have done better with an honest declaration of her positions on abortion and other life issues.  That lack of candor, whatever one thinks of the relevance of abortion in a city commission race, certainly cost Kelly votes in a low turn-out election.  If so, this was a watershed year in city politics.

LAGRAND WINS SECOND WARD SEAT

Businessman David LaGrand won yesterday's run-off election for the Grand Rapids City Commission's seat in the Second Ward.  He decisively defeated school teacher Ruth Kelly with 4,049 votes against 2,739 votes for her.  LaGrand will replace Rick Tormala who chose to run for mayor this year instead of re-election to the City Commission.  He will take his seat in January.

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS

You will recall back in July during the Grand Rapids mayoral race, incumbent George Heartwell sent out a notorious postcard targeting Catholic voters.  It featured local Catholic landmarks and the endorsement of prominent Catholics in the area including members of the clergy.  It gave the impression that Heartwell had the backing of the Catholic establishment while concealing his support for abortion-on-demand and other life issues offensive to the deep convictions of most Catholics.

The postcard's purpose was to undercut the Catholic vote for his pro-life opponent Rick Tormala.  It probably succeeded, because all Heartwell needed to do was keep enough Catholic voters untroubled by his real positions on abortion, assisted suicide, and embryonic stem cell research, and so at home on election day, to squeak out a victory over Tormala.  And that is what happened when Hizzoner crawled over the finish line with just over 50% of the vote.

Heartwell justified this little bit of creative politicking by arguing that he didn't have to publicly declare his opposition to Catholic positions on the life issues, because as mayor he had no way to influence government policy regarding them.  You have to hand it to Heartwell.  He explained away one deceit with another.  Well, a leopard doesn't change his spots, does he?  After maintaining an unprincipled silence during the mayoral race about his opposition to what Catholics and others call the "culture of life", Heartwell as mayor of Grand Rapids is now beating the drums for embryonic stem cell research.

On Wednesday, November 7th, Heartwell will appear as one of the speakers at an event promoting embryonic stem cell research.  It is called "Stem Cell Research: The Science, the Potential, and the Law" and is presented by the advocacy group Michigan Citizens for Stem Cell Research and Cures (MCSCRC).  In turn the whole affair is hosted by the liberal political action committee Democracy for America, founded by Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, a pro-abortion extremist.  MCSCRC purports to dispense with the myths that have surrounded stem cell research during the ongoing political controversy over the use of embryonic human beings (or in MCSCRC's parlance, a small clump of cells) in some of that research.  However, MCSCRC's actual agenda is to push a set of talking points to be used against opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

So why are Heartwell, MCSCRC, and Democracy for America hepped up about opposition to embryonic stem cell research?  Because, folks, the MCSCRC has filed paperwork last week to put the issue on the ballot in November 2008.  MCSCRC wants to not only remove the long-standing restrictions under state law against killing embryonic humans in medical research but also to require taxpayers to fund embryonic stem cell research.  To win that battle in Michigan, a strongly pro-life state, MCSCRC has to equip the troops with the right soundbites for the campaign.  Hence, events like the one Mayor Heartwell is speaking at next week.

So much for the mayor having no infuence on government policy in these matters.

HEARTWELL THE HYPOCRITE

You will recall during the recent Grand Rapids mayoral campaign, incumbent George Heartwell solemnly explained that he would not declare his position on abortion because as mayor there is nothing he can do about it.  Of course, the truth was that Heartwell wanted to keep his pro-abortion politics concealed from the strong pro-life constituency among voters in the city.  Evidence of Heartwell's deceit was furnished this week when he asked two city commissioners to draft a resolution opposing the "U.S. occupation of Iraq".

Now it might occur to you that if Heartwell says he has to remain silent on abortion because as mayor he has no authority to address the issue, then he should also remain silent on the Iraq War for the same reason.  But Heartwell's a hypocrite.  His principle of silence applies only as needed to advance his political career.  Silence reigns over abortion because that way Heartwell doesn't stir up a large group of voters in opposition to him.  But sanctimonious drum-beating is the order of the day on the Iraq War because that motivates an outspoken fringe in support of him.

Not that Heartwell's hypocrisy is smart politics.  I cannot fathom what can be gained by Heartwell, even with the City Commission's backing, pontificating with a lefty message on the Iraq War that:  [1] Would have absolutely no effect on U.S. policy, while [2] alienating a large plurality of voters who either support the war or at least will take the resolution as a vote of no-confidence in our troops.  While Heartwell may get hosannas from the fruitcakes who've got time on their hands to march around protesting on street corners, he will only get the disgust of those who want to know why he is wasting time on a useless resolution when the city government has big problems to solve.

I guess that's the way Heartwell's "mandate" is going to shake out over the next four years.