On Blackmail, Abortion,and Mercy: A Michigan Tale

Lee Chatfield is a Freshman Republican representing a district in Michigan that includes my low income county, Chippewa, along with some of the richest counties in the state.  His heart, he says, is with God, so naturally he ran as a Tea Party candidate.  He works with the Republican majority to undermine crucial social programs in our beleaguered state because, I don't know--tough love, boot straps, nanny state, the poor don't need it, the rich do, sin, punishment, retribution, all of the above.

He's young, good looking, clean-cut, has four small kids, a beautiful family, a nice life.  He doesn't look mean or judgmental or even clueless.  But he's a Republican in a state where meanness and intolerance are expected from his kind, so from what I know, he's toeing the mark, following the line, giving it all he's got to ignore the plight of the people he represents, justifying instead the GOP/Koch/ALEC/Mackinac Center assaults on the poor and the disenfranchised.

But something happened that should, by all rights, make him reconsider the need to go on the attack against innocent people whose backgrounds he couldn't possibly understand:  Last week his wife became the victim of a potential blackmailer.

On Friday, Lee announced on Facebook that his wife, Stephanie, had a secret that was about to be exposed.  When she was in high school she had an abortion. She went to a party, she doesn't know what happened, she became pregnant and she panicked.  She had an abortion and she's regretted it ever since.

I'm not here to judge Lee Chatfield's wife.  This is her own personal business and she deserves the right to keep it quiet.  But it's out in the open now and she and her husband handled it as well as could be expected.  In the statement included on Chatfield's Facebook page, his wife Stephanie talked about the shame she felt and still feels.  She talked about how her faith helped her through it. She talked about her pro-life stance and how it has made her more empathetic toward women who might find themselves in her shoes but who now need the kind of guidance that would keep them from having to abort their own babies. She asked for understanding.

What she didn't talk about was the fact that her husband is a hard-headed proponent of killing off Planned Parenthood.

Candidate Lee Chatfield at a Planned Parenthood protest.

Another protest view

 Last year the 26 year old Christian school teacher ran on a platform that included stopping Medicaid payments associated with the ACA, dropping protections for the LGBT community, and making good on a promise to defund Planned Parenthood.

In August, he headed a protest rally in front of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Petoskey, bragging it up about putting an end to the evils going on in there.

In November he won the election against Jim Page, the Democrat who ran on a platform of increasing funding to public education, increasing the minimum wage, ending Right to Work in Michigan, addressing environmental issues, and improving health care for all.  He won it by attacking all of those ideas, using the defunding of Planned Parenthood as the icing on the cake.

Lee Chatfield's wife has lived for years with her own perceived shame over an abortion. She has that right. It's her life. But when she joins her husband in his attempts to shut down Planned Parenthood, an organization celebrated for its work in helping millions of women with their reproductive needs, she infringes on the rights of other women.  While Planned Parenthood doesn't advocate abortion as the only outcome for an unplanned pregnancy, they do add it to their list of options. Options. They're not in the business of killing babies.  They don't sell baby parts. They don't deserve these wrong-headed, dishonest attempts to shut them down.

Stephanie Chatfield didn't deserve to be outed over her very private decision to have an abortion, either. I hope, when all this blows over, she can empathize with women finding themselves in her shoes and can finally understand that our lives cannot be subject to someone else's decisions about them.

Out of misery comes mercy.

I read that somewhere.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

There's a Poison In Michigan And It's Not Just In The Water

You've probably heard that the water supply in Flint, Michigan is loaded with lead and has been poisoning the city's children, along with everyone else.  So far, there are 200 confirmed cases of lead poisoning among children under six, with some 9000 more believed to be at risk.  That's just the kids.

The water crisis began way back in April of 2014, when Flint's governor-appointed emergency manager (The sole dictator of municipal affairs after removing all duly elected officials from their bounden duties.) fired their water supplier, the city of Detroit, for charging too much.  He then decreed, despite numerous warnings from experts, that the water in the Flint River was good enough, and ordered the water department to begin running it through the old, lead-lined pipes.

It turned out that those old pipes were okay when Detroit water flowed through them but once the more corrosive Flint River water began running, it ate into the lead and leached it into the water supply going to the city's poorest neighborhoods.  (Something the folks at Flint's General Motors plant warned them would happen, since they had long ago discovered how hard that water was on their equipment and stopped using it.)

The water was murky and smelled bad but the water department assured the residents it was okay to bathe in, and, more importantly, to drink.  So the residents bathed in it and cooked with it and drank it, wanting to believe their government officials wouldn't be allowing them to use that nasty water if it wasn't safe.

Photo source:  Sam Owens/AP

But it wasn't safe.  It isn't safe. Not by a long shot. So after almost two years of going back and forth about this awful water and the dangers it held, Governor Rick Snyder was real sorry for how it turned out, and said so publicly.  "I apologize for the state's part in this," he said.  And says.  And no doubt will go on saying.  Because, words, you know, mean something.

To his credit, he shut down the Emergency Manager operation in Flint (that same emergency manager he put in place even after Michigan voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum against emergency managers) and he fired a few people in high offices.  So now--now something would be done!  Well, okay, not now as in NOW.  It's more like "Now that national attention is on us, we're going to be thinking seriously about doing something about this!"

You would think, after all the hoo-haw, the governor would at last have put in that all-important call to the Feds--to FEMA--asking for an issuance of a Federal state of emergency.  You would think.

Well, he's getting to it.  It's not time yet, he says.  First he had to put out a state state of emergency, the necessary precursor to getting the Feds involved, not to mention an almost magical procrastination tool for someone who wants desperately to go on believing there's no way, no how he'll EVER need the services of those folks in Washington.

To Snyder's mind, just issuing the SOM is going above and beyond the call of gubernatorial duty.  He held a press conference the other day to brag about this big step he took, seeming not to recognize, until members of the press started asking him about it, that the next step, calling the Federal Emergency Management Agency (which, for some, might have been the first step), would be a good thing, too.  His solution, instead, was to ask churches and charities to dig in and deliver truckloads of little water bottles.  (Please!  Don't make me go to them! Give!  Give!)

Update:  Gov. Snyder, in order to stall the Feds, is bringing in the National Guard.  They'll be delivering cases of little water bottles, filters, and testing kits.  State troopers will be delivering water door-to-door where needed.  No mention of the water buffaloes, the big military tank trucks carrying potable water, even though Rachel Maddow suggested it the other night.  Too bad they don't watch her.  It's hard to rinse shampooed hair with little water bottles, not to mention cleansing tushies.)

You might wonder how all of this could happen, given the government resources available to the Snyder administration, just in our state alone. You, my friends, are not alone.  But let me remind you that Michigan has been under a supreme, GOP-enforced dictatorship since New Year's Day, 2011.  There is a long, dirty laundry list of the slow takeover of an entire state, much of it outlined in this June, 2015 Mother Jones article.  Rachel Maddow has been resolute in her reporting of Michigan's plight since the early days of the takeover, when Chris Savage at Eclectablog, Michigan's foremost progressive blog, brought it to her attention.  It's not as if this is anything different from business as usual.  Except now people are being physically injured instead of just losing jobs or homes or going broke or hungry.

This is not a takeover in the truest sense, since two elections had to take place in order to get Snyder and his GOP-majority cohorts where they are today.  That means there were enough people willing to allow this to happen without regard to the rest of us--or even to themselves.  These "leaders" were elected mainly on the strength of their anti-Fed, pro-state's-rights promises.  Their campaigns were built on hatred, fear and mistrust of anyone in Washington or beyond.  Now they're in a fix:  How do they ask for federal assistance without looking like they actually (Oh, ew, gross!) need it?

So here might be a good place to remind voters that when a candidate for a publicly held taxpayer-paid office says he or she is "anti-government" what they really mean is they're anti-any-other-government-except-their-very-own.

Let Michigan be a lesson for you.

(One more thing in the "Adding Insult to Injury, Michigan Style" department:  Those people who were fooled into believing their poisoned water was safe?  They're still getting water bills.  No.  I'm not kidding.)



 For more on the water poisoning in Flint, see The Atlantic's What Did the Governor Know About Flint's Water and When Did He Know It?

For Michigan progressive resources, see my Michigan Under Siege page.

(Also posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

Peace Is A Wish Our Hearts Make

As someone who wallows in politics, in opining, in making fun of those who, if I were the violent type, would be subject to ear pulls and nose-tweaking, I'm still surprised when, like clockwork, these are my thoughts at Christmas time:

Deliver me, please, from anger, from ugliness, and keep these peaceful moments coming.

You may have noticed that it's been a while since I've written about politics. (Better than a fortnight, I see.)  But I haven't been silent.  Lord, no!  I've been commenting and arguing in small doses, but until now I haven't felt the urge to write a real post.  Judging from past experience, it's only a passing phase, but it feels good not be angry at the world and all its cruelties, its craziness, its Trumps and Fiorinas, its Onward Christmas Warriors.

I expect this will go on until after the Holidays.  We've closed up our house in the northern boonies and are in the city with family and friends now. Love is in the air.  Hugs, giggly kids, heavenly desserts. . .  It's those Hallmark moments.  They're killing me!

It's hard for me to be angry right now, even at the people who deserve it. When I heard Lindsey Graham was quitting the race, I even found a tiny soft spot just for him.  Aawww.  Nearing the last of the old guard.  He may be a war-monger and a bit of a fibber, but he's not rude, crude, or a low-life.  He may never say anything I can agree with, but when he speaks my tongue doesn't catch fire, my eyes don't bulge, and steam doesn't come out of my ears.  Glad tidings, if not good will.

I can't talk right now about Governor Snyder, Michigan's anti-government legislature, and the lead-poisoning of children in Flint, caused by an emergency manager who decided on his own, with a big thumbs up from the Gov, that saving a few bucks was far more important than the health and safety of an entire city.  It's my own Yuletide promise forcing me to keep the outrage down for the holidays, but it's festering, it's in there and it will come out.

I will leave it to others to comment on Donald Trump calling Hillary's longish bathroom break during Saturday night's debate "disgusting".  You won't hear it from me that it sounds like Donald the Magnificent has perfected the art of peefraining.

I'll leave aside the talk of guns until after the ball has dropped at midnight, the start of a brand new year, unless the unthinkable happens again, in which case, I'm in.  Big time.  But here's hoping.

It's peace I'm after now.  A moment's respite.  A slowing-down, a deep breath, a calm and steady drifting through the sights and sounds of the Holiday season.  A moratorium on palpitations.

But peace is more than a single mindset, more than a quest for calm on a few special days. It's a planetary necessity.  It's how we got here and how we'll stay.

I felt it yesterday as NBC's Hoda Kotb hosted an interfaith panel of women.  She asked three spiritual leaders--Christian, Jew and Muslim--if peace is possible. (Watch it here.)  Peace, they said, is love.

And so it is.

May peace, hope, and love be yours throughout these coming days.  If not, there's always next year.  We'll work on it together.

______________

Posted, too, at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars.

Todd Courser: You're Sure That's Just Tea You're Drinking?

Here's a question:  If you were a state lawmaker (male, married) known for sniffy, holier-than-thou, just awful Tea Party politics and you were having an affair with another sniffy holier-than-thou Tea Party lawmaker (female, married) and you realized you were about to get caught, how would you handle it?  Would you think, seriously, that the best way to deflect from the real affair was to invent a phony story about being accused of a liaison with a male prostitute and then get really pissed at the person spreading that story, even though that person was you?

If you answered "no", you can pride yourself on the fact that you are among the multitudes.  Only one person on the entire surface of this earth can (and would) answer "yes", and his name, if you haven't heard, is Todd Courser.

You couldn't have missed the stories coming out about this whole tawdry affair.  (Don't you love that word, "tawdry"?  Couldn't you see someone like Todd Courser using it?)  The stories are everywhere now, all over the national airwaves, with our friends at Eclectablog staying right on top of it so we don't have to. (updates galore!)

(Photo:  Dale G. Young/AP)

Todd Courser appeared on the scene in Lansing on January 1 of this year, when he was sworn in as a Freshman legislator (along with said inamorata and all-around legislative partner in crime, Cindy Gamrat).  Before the month was out he was throwing his weight around about his office furniture (he didn't like it) and about the seating arrangement in the House (he was offended by his placement).

Twenty days after he and his pal Gamrat were sworn in, they were already responding to the governor's State of the State message.

"Greetings friends and fellow Patriots, We want to first thank God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for our salvation and His abounding and generous gifts, blessings and His grace, and mercy on our state and nation. It is important to acknowledge that it is only by His power and might that our state and nation remain. It is not the bills or the laws or the regulations that make our state and nation great, rather, it is recognizing who God is and submitting to His authority and dominion in our lives and as a state and nation; without this acknowledgement and also valuing God’s gift of life, then all other steps to set our state on the right course will be amiss."

From there they went on to the hazards of a bloated government,  the constant collecting and shameful misuse of our taxes, the need to move away from "cradle to grave" government care-taking (As if!)  and an entreaty to trust in the Lord.

Which led, of course, to this:

America is a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian values and God has given us incredible freedom and opportunity.  Let us enjoy all that we have been blessed with as we carry forth with the responsibility to bestow these same freedoms and opportunities to future generations.

They did actually mention corporate welfare, and for that I was forced to give them brownie points.  Which I promptly took away after reading their core liberties in something called The Contract for Liberty Project.  (See State of the State response, linked here, in case you missed it above.)  The list begins with "The freedom to be born" and "The freedom to defend ourselves" and ends with "Free from government intrusions" and "Free and independent states".

And we're paying them for this.

Ordinarily, I'm one of those people who doesn't give a flying foofoo about who's sleeping with who.  Whom.  Whatever.  It's a personal matter, affecting only the injured private parties, and as long as it doesn't affect their ability to govern it's none of my business.  In this case, I'm making an exception. Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat are such insufferable Right Wing pseudo-religious hypocrites, I can't think of anyone in my state who deserves this kind of exposure more.   It couldn't happen to two more narrow-minded, ill-equipped, pretend-politicians.

Joshua Cline, a former staffer for both Courser and Gamrat, quit in disgust in April, just months after the new session began.  He recently agreed to an interview with the Detroit Free Press. The article  focused, of course, on the inside story about the romantic hi-jinks, leaving what I thought was the real gem for later:

Cline, a Lapeer County native, knew Courser before he became a legislator and worked on previous campaigns for the Lapeer Republican. So, he said, he was shocked to become a staffer and encounter a boss who treated his staffers with disrespect and adopted a 'haughty and elitist' attitude.
"We had a staff meeting in early January and [Courser] said, 'Let's get it straight boys. We're not here to pass legislation. We're here for the messaging moments and media,' Cline said. He said the decision to quit was wrenching."

So the newly elected taxpayer-employed public servant thought he'd found the perfect pulpit.  Fancy that.

But when the feces hit the fan,  Todd couldn't leave well enough alone.  He couldn't just go into his closet and pray quietly (Matthew 6:6) like Cindy apparently did.   No, he had to take to Facebook (where he seems to spend a lot of time) and do a little crying out loud

My lack of righteousness does not negate God’s righteousness –
In all of this – it is nothing short of a massive earthquake for me and my family and those who have supported me and even to those who hate me; thru this a series of common themes have emerged and many will take days weeks months and generations to see the full fruit of, but one that is clear is that I am now the poster boy for those who would say “God is dead,” or “ Christians are failures,” or “Christians are hypocrites.”

I didn't say that.  Did you?

Two days ago Todd told his Facebook followers that there would be an announcement on his website. Naturally, everyone thought for sure he was going to resign.  But, no.  No, he didn't.  Instead, he announced that he was requesting an Attorney General investigation into the purchase of an expensive and unnecessary legislative office building in downtown Lansing.  (You go, Todd!)  But at the very bottom of the announcement--easy to miss if you neglected to read the whole thing--was this sentence:  "I am also working on a statement in regards to this current call for my censure..."

Oh dear.  This doesn't look good.  But then neither does Todd's website page, where his Fourth of July greeting called for Privatizing Marriage:

We are living in the last days...
2 Chronicle 7:14 - if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins, and heal their land…Please sign the Religious Freedom Petition Now!

At least I think that's what he was doing.  I don't exactly know how one goes about keeping marriage private and still legal.  If it's marriage in the eyes of God, they tried that.  Stamp your foot three times, turn your back on your spouse, and the marriage is annulled.  (Male foot-stampers and back-turners only.)

Betcha Todd wishes there had been something like that in place for affairs. Huh?


(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU)

We Need Paid Sick Leave Because Workers Are Humans First

There's a fuss going on in Michigan over whether the state should mandate paid sick leave for all workers.  It's the Democrats who are proposing it but the Republicans dominate the government, so at this point it's not a question of winning the issue, it's a question of how far their bill gets before it fails.  (The sad backstory:  This same bill was first introduced in 2012.  The Republicans made sure it didn't get to committee for consideration. It was reintroduced in 2013.  Same story.  Now, in 2015, the Dems, bless their hearts, are trying again.)

I'm a pessimist when it comes to the Republican mode of governing anything, but I'm also a realist.  The Republicans (and, to be fair, some Democrats) will always come down on the side of business whenever the issue of worker equity comes up.  That's because business is where the money lies and money begets power. It's the climate we're in until we decide on climate change.

Source:  Wikimedia Commons

The quick statistics are these:  Just under half of all workers in Michigan now have to take sick days without pay.  The new law, if passed, would affect more than a million workers, both full and part time.  The Democratic bill about to be introduced in both the Michigan Senate and the House "would require  employers to offer one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours a person works. For somebody working 40 hours a week, that would equate to 69.3 hours or 8.7 standard eight-hour work days of sick leave per year. It would apply to both part-time and full-time employees."

We're talking, at best, about nine paid sick days a year. One nasty bout of flu could take up half of them.  It's not an outrageous proposal. 

The Republicans saw this coming and came up with an answer to the bill--the House Republican Action Plan.  The first order of business, following the governor's "relentless positive action" ( their words, not mine) is to kill the state's prevailing wage law.  (I admit I'm shocked this law is still in effect.  It guarantees certain workers the same wages and benefits as their union counterparts. I can't imagine how it was overlooked when Michigan became a Right-to-Work state, but never mind:  They've caught it now.) 

Their second O of B was to address paid sick days/leave:

Eliminating Local Ordinances That Hinder Job Creation:  Municipal ordinances governing wages and benefits known as "sick pay ordinances" institute rules and regulations on local employers in providing sick pay to their employees.  Many job providers are fearful such local actions hinder job creation.  Legislative efforts will be taken to ensure local ordinances are not more restrictive than state standard. 

So the state, as if there isn't enough to do, is now taking on the task of eliminating any local job ordinances that don't fit their idea of "none is good".   If, let's say, Solidarity City decides to consider the fact that most employees are human beings and not machines and comes up with a plan where those human beings can't be penalized for having messy lives that might require their being at home instead of at work, that's a good thing, right?  We're all for home and families, right?

As might be expected, business owners are lining up behind the Republicans, expressing their outrage at such a blatant attempt to strip them of their earnings by forcing them to pay sick people while they're sick!  (I'll just insert here the fact that there were decades upon decades wherein most employees were guaranteed paid sick days.  But we had unions then.)

In this AP story out of Lansing:

The Michigan Restaurant Association says it opposes "one-size-fits-all mandates." The group says restaurants have "thrived without the added costs and intrusions of labor unions."   

To which I say, wouldn't it be great if slavery were still in vogue?  (Hard to take any restaurant association seriously when they're A-okay with waitstaff working for $3.10 an hour plus tips.  So we'll move on.)

So let's talk a minute:

Employees, we can agree that if you need this job you're pretty much screwed if your kids get sick or if you get sick or your partner gets sick or your house burns down or someone in your family dies and your employer not only won't pay you for the days when you need to be at home, but says, "I need you here at work, and if you can't do the job I'll find someone else who can."  So hang on a minute while I go talk to your employers.  Be right back.

Employers, when you hired these employees you must have seen, the moment they entered your space, that they were living, breathing human beings with lives that fill each 24-hour period completely.  If you know anything about yourself, you could probably, if you wanted to, relate to their humanness. You have a family, they have a family.  You get sick, they get sick.  Something happens that keeps you from coming in to work.  Something happens that keeps them from coming in to work.  But here, you insist, the similarities end.  You get paid for the days you're away.  Too bad about them. 

But that's not enough, is it?  You expect such loyalty from your workers you allow yourself to believe that any calamity that might befall your employee is a direct insult to you.  How could they do this, especially now, when they know you need them right here, right now!

Where is your loyalty to them?  You've built a business that you can't run on your own.  You hire people because you need them. They come to work for you because they need you.  They don't become your personal property because you've hired them.  You have entered into a mutual agreement and that agreement requires a mutual commitment.  An obligation.  You're both human and all your good intentions may fall be the wayside now and then, but the mutual agreement still stands.  You need them and they need you.  You're in this together.

So get over yourself and open your eyes to the needs of the people who work for you.  Pay them what the job is worth and never make them have to decide between pressing personal needs and their paycheck. Trust them.  The majority will always do the right thing.

Workers, are you still with me?  There are groups that are working to get this bill passed.  They need your help.  They want your input, your stories.  Are your sick days paid?  Unpaid?  What has happened to you because of it?  Take a minute, please, and show them some support.  They're working hard for you.

In Michigan:

Mothering Justice

National:

Paid Sick Days

National Partnership


(Guest-blogged at Eclectablog.  Cross-posted at Liberaland, dagblog, and Freak Out Nation)

Vandals, I Don't Get You. Can We Talk?

van·dal

noun: vandal; plural noun: vandals

1. 1.

   a person who deliberately destroys or damages public or private property.

   "the rear window of the car was smashed by vandals"

   synonyms:

   hoodlum, barbarian, thug, hooligan, delinquent, despoiler, desecrator, saboteur "vandals defaced the front steps of the church"

2. 2.

   a member of a Germanic people that ravaged Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the 4th–5th centuries and sacked Rome in AD 455.

_____________________

When I was around seven years old I wandered over to our neighbor's roadside mailbox and stole the mail out of it.  There was a vacant lot between their house and ours and I remember sitting in the weeds opening that mail. (The mail that, at seven, I doubt I could even read) Then I got scared.  I tore it all up into little pieces.  I got caught--I don't remember how--and my mother marched me over to our neighbors, where I had to apologize for stealing their mail and tearing it up.

What I learned through my tears was that one piece of that mail--the pretty one with the red and blue stripes around the edges--was a long-awaited letter from their soldier son who was fighting in the war overseas.   That was seven decades ago and I still cringe at the memory.  They were sweet people, those neighbors, and they were kind enough to accept my apology, but I've never forgotten how I felt when I had to admit, to them, to my mother, and to myself, that I did a terrible thing.  What was I thinking?  What would make me steal and then destroy something that didn't belong to me?  I didn't do it to deliberately hurt our neighbors but the end result was that I did hurt them.

But even though I was a vandal myself--no getting around it--I've never understood acts of vandalism.  I've heard all the excuses-- pent-up rage, drunkenness, group dynamics, an extreme sense of privilege--but every act of vandalism is a criminal act.  Deliberate, wanton destruction is a crime.  It's not cute, it's not cool, it's not ever justified, and it can't be considered anything less than what it is, just because the people who do it aren't your ordinary criminals. 

So last week this happened:  University of Michigan frat members took over 45 rooms at a Michigan ski resort and over the course of a couple of days did more than $50,000 in damage:

Treetops Resort manager Barry Owens said the students were escorted from the premises by Michigan State Police last weekend after causing $50,000 in damage. The resort is in Dover Township near Gaylord.

Owens said Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity members caused significant damage to furniture, carpet, walls and ceilings.

Sigma Alpha Mu Michigan chapter President Joshua Kaplan says his members "are embarrassed and ashamed of the behavior" of some members. He says the chapter "accepts full responsibility" and "will be working with the management of the resort to pay for all damages and cleaning costs."

"This behavior is inconsistent with the values, policies, and practices of this organization," Kaplan said in a statement. "We will work within our own organization and with university officials to hold those who are responsible accountable for their actions.

Kaplan said there will be no further comment from his chapter or organization.

"They caused an excessive amount of damage," Owens said. "The rooms were just a pigsty. Unfortunately, I've been in this business for 30 years and it's the worst condition of rooms that I've ever seen. There were broken ceiling tiles in the hallway, broken furniture, broken windows. There's carpet that's going to need to be replaced."

Owens said there were more than 120 people, men and women, in about 45 rooms.

"A lot of the rooms were just very, very dirty," he said. "There were holes in the walls and different things like that. They were very disruptive to additional guests that were here."

Owens said prior to the students being removed, resort staff attempted to rectify the situation.

"We tried to address it with them, but we made a mistake and took these people at their word when they said they would change their behavior," he said.

The resort is considering its options, including pursuing criminal charges against the fraternity. Owens said the resort also has a meeting planned with university officials.

What about the criminal charges against the students? What happened after the Kids Just Want to Have Fun Gang were "escorted from the premises" by the State Police?  Were they fingerprinted and then thrown into as many cells as it took to fill?  Are they still there?

I haven't heard, but you know they're not still in jail up there in Gaylord. Who are they?  Give me their names.  Let me talk to them.  Let them try to explain why they did what they did.  I want to know how they're feeling right now.  Not how they're feeling about getting caught or being blamed or  about whether or not they'll still have a fraternity.  I want to know how they're feeling about themselves.

(And whether, at some future date, they're going to be thinking about running for public office. . .)

Treetops Resort damage - Photo credit:  Detroit Free Press/Keith Wilkinson

(Cross-posted at Dagblog, Constant Commoner, and FreakOutNation)

Protecting Wolves by Throwing Them to the Wolves?

Yesterday I wrote about Opening Day for Michigan’s deer hunting season.  But yesterday was also opening day for a hunting season not seen in Michigan for almost 50 years.  Despite pushback from many different organizations, and petitions set up on a whole lot of petition sites, our grand Poobahs in Pure Michigan caved once again to special interests and instituted a hunting season for wolves.

Yes, wolves.

There was a time not so long ago (pre-1965) that our wolf population was zero, and we didn’t like that.  Other states had wolves; why didn’t we?  So in 1965 we gave wolves legal protection in our state. How we got the word out to the wolves, I don’t know, but over the years a few of them began to straggle in.

In 1974, after only six confirmed sightings in nearly a decade, we decided something had to be done.  Four wolves were captured in wolf-heavy Minnesota and plunked down in the Huron Mountains in the Upper Peninsula. Within eight months they had all been killed.  (Nobody ‘fessed up.  Surprise.)  None of them reproduced. (See Gray Wolf timeline here.)

Sadness at the DNR.  They wanted a wolf population in the U.P.  With the help of the Michigan Wildlife Fund (See below) and other protections, including habitat enhancements, wolves finally began to appear in greater numbers.

The population expanded (Woo Hoo!), but with the expansion came more and more incidences of predation.  The wolves were killing livestock and pets and were spotted too close for comfort near human population centers.  Once their numbers grew to more than 400 the DNR began to see them as a liability and not an asset.

Could there have been any other outcome?  The Upper Peninsula isn’t a zoo or a preserve.  Wolves will be wolves.  But this was excellent news for the hunting interests out there salivating, hoping against hope that wolf numbers would continue to explode and that Canis lupus would keep that wolfish behavior going.

They have long been making plans for the inevitable wolf hunt.

And yesterday it happened.

In the Detroit Free Press:

Engadine Feed & Supply store owner Dick Pershinske said he looks forward to entering the woods Friday for Michigan’s historic, first-ever wolf hunt.

“I’m an avid hunter, so this is an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often,” he said today. “It may be the last hunt, too, if the environmentalists get their way.”

As hunters excitedly prepared for the hunt this afternoon, the mood was far more somber about 300 miles to the south in Mt. Pleasant, where the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe planned a candlelight vigil for the animal so iconic in their tribal heritage.

“The gray wolf is significant to our culture,” said tribal spokesman Frank Cloutier. “It’s a part of our creation story, very significant to who we are and what we believe.”

The hunt calls for a maximum of 43 wolves to be harvested in three designated zones of the Upper Peninsula. It is slated to run from dawn Friday through Dec. 31 or whenever the target number is reached. Michigan has sold 1,200 licenses for the hunt.

Ah, there it is:  Twelve hundred licenses sold when a mere 43 wolves can be killed.  ($100 for residents; $500 for non-residents)

It’s not about culling predators (which wolves most certainly are, but they knew that in the 1970s when they were encouraging the population.)  Farmers and homeowners already have the right to shoot predators, including wolves, on their property.

It’s not about feeding families (nobody eats wolf).

For the state, it’s all about giving hunters a new sport.  It’s all about the money.  Not only the uptick in license fees, but in years ahead the kill limit will increase and Michigan will benefit as one of only a handful of Midwestern states allowing wolf hunting.  The economic run-off could be big.

In Michigan we can pay extra for license plates that will aid our favorite organizations.  We have one with a picture of a loon, for example, that aids the Michigan Non-game Wildlife Fund.  We can also check off a box for the same fund on our Michigan Income Tax forms.
From the MWF page:

Since 1983, over $10 million has been raised for these important management efforts through voluntary check-off contributions on the state income tax form, sales of specialty license plates, and by direct donations. Six million of that $10 [million] dollars has been placed in a permanent trust, and interest from that trust will continue to support threatened and endangered species well into the future.

The Nongame Fish and Wildlife Fund is responsible for:

• restoring Trumpeter swans to their historic wetland areas;
• reintroducing the Peregrine falcon;
• implementing the Michigan Frog and Toad Survey;
• helping the wolf population through monitoring and education;
• establishing over 120 watchable wildlife viewing sites;
• relocating osprey to expand their range in Michigan;
• surveying abandoned mines to protect bat wintering sites;
• identifying rare plant sites; and

So now that they’ve decided our once threatened and endangered wolves are out of the woods, where will the wolf money go?  Will the DNR keep “helping” the wolf population they so purposefully worked to expand, now that the crew in Lansing has caved to the hunting special interests and reclassified the wolf as fair game?

Note, too, that not a single dollar of the money going toward wolf protection came from hunters’ license fees, even though they’re the ones who’ll now benefit from all that TLC.  The general population donated all of it, thinking it would actually go toward protection and education.  Nobody ever mentioned wolf-hunting.

John Barnes at MLive quotes Bob Graves, one of the Upper Peninsula hunters yesterday (My emphasis below, because, yes, they really say this crap out loud.  I’ve heard it, or something like it, more times than I care to count):

“Yes, I’ll take the pelt, but that’s not why. It’s not (being) here to put a trophy on the wall, it’s to experience the outdoors, and to hunt a majestic animal, a beautiful animal.”
There is another reason too, adds [Mark] Bird, 62[, of Kent City]. “This might be Michigan’s only wolf hunt. It might be just once in a lifetime opportunity.”

So that’s it.  There’s talk of putting the issue on the ballot in 2014, but, even with enough signatures, and even with an iron-clad “no” vote, there’s no guarantee our current Koch-based administration won’t just ignore the will of the people.  They’ve done it before.

( Iggy Pop’s letter to Governor Snyder.  Go, Iggy!)

As of this writing, three wolves have been taken.  The DNR keeps track and so can we.

________________

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf.  In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep hill shot is always confusing. when our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.  I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes-- something known only to her and the mountain.  I was young then, full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters paradise.  But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

 ________________________________

NOTE:  A big Thank You to Chris Savage at Eclectablog for choosing this post as a Guest Post for his website today.  Check it out!

Run, Bambi, Run! Man Is In The Woods

Today marks the opening of hunting season here in Michigan’s north woods.  The schools are closed in most upper state communities, including ours.

Opening Day is an annual holiday for the kids, even though only a small percentage of them will be out in the woods with guns. For many of them, today will be their initiation in deer camp, and it’s a day they’ve been waiting for all year.   I don’t quite know when it started but I do know that up here it’s one of those holidays that is so sacrosanct nobody questions it.

 I chose to live where I live, knowing I would be the odd woman out when it came to hunting and killing animals.  I’ve lived here for enough years now to have grown used to the fact that almost everybody I know here either hunts or looks forward to the benefits of the hunt.

  I haven’t become complacent about it, but I do know it’s more complicated than a simple wish to make it stop.  Up here, where unemployment measures in double digits and people are noticeably poor, I’ve come to recognize that a deer kill means  food for a struggling family.

And who am I, a meat-eater myself, to turn up my nose? As long as we’re into eating meat, animals must die in order to keep our freezers full.  I try not to think about that, hypocritical as that may be, but it’s a fact, isn’t it?

But hunting for sport is different.

With hunting as sport, meat in the freezer is a byproduct of the main event, which is killing for the sheer thrill of killing.  No matter how the industry tries to mainstream it, they can’t get away from the fact that there’s nothing sporting about much of what we call “hunting.”

Hunting no longer means tracking your prey.  It means sitting and waiting, often in a comfortable covered deer blind or tree stand.  The folks up here stake out their territory and begin building bait piles weeks ahead of opening day, in order to make the deer feel comfortable enough so that they’ll stick around until the day the shooting begins.

Around this time every store and gas station takes to selling 30 to 50 pound bags of corn, carrots, and sugar beets.  Deer feed.  Big white blocks of salt lick are stacked alongside the feed.  Artificial musk and urine scent can be sprayed on the bushes and trees surrounding the covered, camouflaged stand from which the hunter “hunts”.   There are deer calls and deer decoys. There are sprays to kill human scent.  Camouflage clothing is not just big business, it’s an up north fashion trend.

Motion sensor trail cameras catch deer on the move, even at night.

Hunting rifles have become high-tech, with state-of-the-art scopes that see in the dark and at long distances.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if they can see around trees, too.)

The most shameful thing that can happen to a hunter during hunting season these days is to come home empty-handed.  If the hunter doesn’t come home with at least one carcass, a quick look in the mirror will pinpoint who is to blame.  Every aid known to man is at their disposal.    The deer will come.  What it takes after that is simply to aim and shoot  Aim.  And shoot.

By the way, when we go for our walk today (and every day through hunting season), this is what I’ll be wearing:

Note:  All photos in this piece belong to me.  If you want to reprint please ask permission first.  Thanks.

RIP Elmore Leonard

Sadly, Elmore Leonard, has died.  He was Detroit's foremost novelist and cheerleader.  I wrote about him at Constant Commoner today in a piece called "I called Elmore Leonard 'Dutch' Once".

You can find it here.

Hulabaloo at the Soo

Let me just say right off that when it comes to Homeland and border security, I'm all for it.

When it comes to appreciating how essential shipping is to the Great Lakes, I'm right at the head of the line.

When it comes to being in awe of the engineering feat that is the Soo Locks I am so in awe I can't stand it.

The Soo Locks.  From Left: MacArthur, Poe, Davis, Sabin

So when I got back on my turf last week and read in our local paper that an investigation into a possible bomb threat had closed the locks just days after the spring shipping season opened, my first instinct, naturally, was to blame Gov. Snyder and the Republican legislators and then the Koch Brothers and the Mackinac Center. (Because they're to blame for so much around here it's hard not to blame them for everything.  I'm sure you can understand.)

But here's what happened:  At 7:30 AM on the morning of March 29 a mailroom clerk at the Soo Locks was gathering up mail to be delivered to the boats scheduled to go through the locks on that day.  (It's a most efficient mail delivery system, given that the boats are girdled into the narrow lock and mail bags can be cast onto their decks as they wait out the raising or lowering of the water in the lock.)  This person heard beeping in one of the packages and thought it might be a bomb.  He called the Army Corp of Engineers who then called the Chippewa County central dispatch, who then sent out the police to check things out.

The police set up a command post at the guard building at the Locks main gate.  From there (and I'm quoting here from the St. Ignace News, April 4, 2013 - not yet available online) :

"Sault Ste. Marie Fire Department, Army Corp of Engineers, Coast Guard, Customs, Border Patrol, Immigration, the U.S Post Office and staff from the International Bridge were also on the scene.  Police on the Canadian side of the St. Mary's River were also advised of the situation.

The Coast Guard temporarily closed traffic on the St. Mary's River and established a 'limited access area' in the vicinity of both the locks and the International Bridge while the investigation was in progress.

A Michigan State bomb disposal unit was brought in from Gaylord [A full 115 miles to the south of the locks, it should be noted] before both it and a MSP K-9 unit searched the mailroom, where no explosives or other hazardous material were found and no packages were heard to be beeping.  Several small packages were then removed from the room where the beeping originated and checked using a mobile scanning vehicle.

Following the scan the packages were opened with one providing the source of the beeping:  an alarm clock."

It seems the alarm clock was set to go off at 7 AM (35 minutes before the mailroom clerk first heard it) and someone packing the thing either forgot to turn it off or neglected to take out the batteries.  (Admonition from Sault Ste. Marie police chief:  "Because of situations like this, the public is reminded not to include batteries in packages that are being sent through the U.S Mail.") So in the course of that few hours of shut-down, 11 lakers and salties (ocean-going vessels) were laid up --six upbound and five downbound--anchored far away from any threat of explosion.

Every boat, big or small, heading into or out of Lake Superior has to go through the Soo Locks System.  In earlier times it was possible to portage around the rapids (there is a 21-foot height difference between Lake Superior and the St. Mary's River) but nobody does it anymore.  Now we depend on the locks.  (Another note:  A new and bigger lock has been approved since 1989 to replace the obsolete Sabin and Davis locks but guess what?  The approval didn't come with funding, and even though they finally broke ground for the thing 20 years later, in 2009, that apparently wasn't impetus enough to free up some cash for it. I would say that's like promising a congressman an annual salary of $174,000 a year without actually providing the funds to pay it, but it isn't.  It's nothing like that.  So never mind.)

But back to the story:  Beeping from a package is a big deal.  (A thought here: Would a bomber really create a bomb that beeps?  Yes.  In the movies. How else would you know to be terrified that there was a bomb in there? Otherwise, probably not.)  Our locks at the Soo are a big deal.  So while I do admit that the Keystone-coppishness of that story tickled my funny bone, I've wondered at times about the vulnerability of the locks.  So I felt pretty good knowing our law-enforcement agencies are sort of on top of situations like these.

In this video (not mine), taken from the public observation deck at the Soo Locks Park, you can see how close the public is allowed to get to these boats.  The observation deck is glass-enclosed but there are other areas in the park where fences might keep humans out but bombs could easily be dispatched.  After 9/11, security was tight and we could only enter the park through one entrance, where guards with wands checked us through.  Now we can meander through unguarded gates at any time during open park hours without fear of bodily wanding.  Since that whole color-coding plan went bust, there is, it seems, nothing written in stone about Homeland Security. 

 A few of my own photos from the Locks:

MacArthur Lock in foreground; Indiana Harbor in Poe Lock

Algoma Transport downbound in MacArthur Lock

"Saltie" Whistler entering Locks channel downbound.  International and railroad bridge ahead.

Locks tour boat upbound in MacArthur Lock.  International Bridge in background.

Back in Michigan but not quite home

Just to let you know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We've been living out of suitcases for almost two weeks now as we worked our way north from our winter digs.  We're in the U.P finally, on the last leg home.  Should get there today and I'm hearing bad news about a snow mound that still needs digging out before we can get to our door.  Should be interesting.

Our nephew plowed out our driveway but put his back out before he could shovel the walk.  Don't know what we're going to do with him but rest assured he'll be punished for this.

Our house in winter

But the worst of it is that my brother Mike died suddenly of a heart attack on March 21.  He was 66 years old. My brother Chris and I are his only next-of-kin and we've been trying to do what we need to do to put his soul to rest and to clear up his affairs.  Someday I may write about him but for now it's too soon.

Life will settle down soon, I hope, and then I'll be back to doing what I love to do best:  Antagonizing the hell out of myself and others.

Mona

News from Michigan, the Nation's First Dictator State

It could be that with all that's going on in the world you might have missed what's happening closer to home, in the sovereign state of Michigan.  In just over two years, since businessman and venture capitalist Rick Snyder became governor, bringing along with him a Republican majority in the legislature and in most courts (including the Supreme one), with a push from the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, our beautiful state has suffered under the country's first duly elected dictatorship.

In March of 2011, two months after his inauguration, Snyder pushed through a draconian Emergency Financial Manager law, essentially giving him the authority to appoint one person to take over the governing of any municipality or school system deemed failing by Our Man Snyder.

In November, 2012 the voters, finally coming to their senses, soundly voted down that outrageously unconstitutional law.  A few weeks later Snyder's minions, ignoring the wishes of the voters, not only reinstated the law, they added wording that would keep the voters from ever voting it down again.

This slid by just days after the Republicans stuck it to the already bruised and bleeding unions by making Michigan, the home of the labor movement, a Right-to-Work state. 

Just last week, the Republican legislature was back working on a bill that would allow health care providers to refuse services to patients/customers for religious or moral reasons.  It's a transparent smackdown of abortion and contraception, but it could also affect anybody from gays to Muslims to blacks to liberal Democrats.

And two days ago, DemocracyTree reported this:

Today the Michigan House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee passed a bill that will punish any university that negotiates with its union for an extended contract prior to the Right-to-Work law going into effect on March 28th. If this bill becomes law, universities stand to lose 15 percent of their funding for any contract negotiated between the Dec. 10th lame-duck RTW law and the March 28th enactment.
The Associated Press reports that Wayne State University could lose $27 million if they follow through with renegotiating their contract. Among universities rumored to be in contract talks are Michigan State University, Lansing Community College, and Western Michigan University.  

And this dispatch from Eclectablog yesterday.  It appears the GOP is caving to Tea Party interests in Michigan again. Medicaid expansion and the state-run Obamacare health exchange will be dead in the water unless they either grow hearts or come to their senses. (I won't hold my breath.)

And it goes on.  Because that's how it works in Michigan now.  The goal is to stop all democratic processes, including governing, in order to allow private profiteers to take over and make bundles off of us.  Roads?  Bridges?  Schools?  Health?  Human services? Out of our hands and going to the highest bidder. (They'll still collect taxes, of course, because. . .why not?)

Now they're working at making life even harder for old and disabled veterans.  The Grand Rapids Home for Veterans, one of two state vets homes, has been turned over to private contractors and, as predicted, it's a mess.  (I'm still trying to figure out how a state-run veteran's home, partially funded by the Feds, can just willy-nilly decide to privatize, but apparently it's one of those loopholes none of us ever has access to.)

From the Free Press this morning:

The contract employees are paid about half as much as the state employees, who made a little more than $20 an hour at the top of their pay rate.
The state workers, who belong to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, say the lower wage results in inexperienced and inadequately trained workers and high turnover.
Tammy Porter, a licensed practical nurse who still works at the home, cited examples of inadequate and negligent care she said she had witnessed. She also read a letter from Andrea Rossman of Saginaw, who works as a nursing director at a health facility and whose father, Joe Vela, lives at the Grand Rapids Home.
On Saturday and Sunday, the home was understaffed and Vela wasn't given a chance to go to the restroom, eat breakfast, or take his medications in a timely manner, Rossman said in the letter. The delayed medication meant "my father's life was put in peril," she said.

There's more.  There's always more.  I can barely keep up, but thankfully there are others who do.

Chris Savage at Eclectablog works tirelessly to get this information out.

Democracy Tree keeps Michigan political news out there, too, as do many others.

Scroll down to the bottom of my "Michigan Under Siege" page for the growing list.

If you want to pass any of this on, we would appreciate it.  We need all the help we can get. (And, by the way, we're worth it.)

Lower Tahquamenon Falls - Upper Peninsula (Photo: Ramona Grigg)

Panera Bread artisans Knead a union

In March, 2012, just six months after their franchise had been bought up by Bread of Life, a company owned by Manna Development, a former McDonald's franchisee, 18 bakers at six Panera Bakery and Cafes along the I-94 corridor in Southwestern Michigan decided to join a union.

The bakers take the midnight shift, working raw dough into the artisan breads Panera has grown famous for.  Their training is extensive--a seven-week "boot camp" with exams and skill demonstrations, a 90-day assessment period, and sometimes as much as a year's worth of kitchen work before the comfort level reaches "artisan" stage.

For their efforts, they earn in the neighborhood of $10 to $11 an hour.  Many of them have no insurance benefits at all, and those who do find their premiums biting a huge chunk out of their already low pay.  The bakers thought they deserved better.

They approached  the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union through their website, and the union took them on, apparently finding nothing odd about such a small contingent--only 18 workers--attempting to form a union.  

Small as the group is, their move toward labor representation was unprecedented in a couple of ways:  They're the first Panera workers in the country to attempt to organize (a move the new owners found "embarrassing") but more than that, their method of organizing took on new dimensions that would have been impossible even a few years ago.   They organized through social networking.

"This group was ready. They did all the work themselves," said [John Price, the bakers' union rep], who added that the Labor Board will issue certification to the I-94 corridor workers on Friday. The Panera workers will be represented by Local 70 out of Grand Rapids. "This is a really intelligent group. They really impressed me. For the most part, they are under 30. They used social media to contact one another." The bakers' use of Facebook and other social media tools are modern twists in the history of collective bargaining -- ones that may prove especially effective in the future, experts say.

"You see a lot of this happening on Facebook and emails. It is very hard for an employer to counter," said Satish Deshpande, associate dean at the Haworth College of Business at Western Michigan University. Deshpande pointed out that no one has to hand out pamphlets or meet in hotel rooms anymore. And while employers can bar union organizers from the workplace, they can't bar them from Facebook.

"Thanks to social media, union organizers can very easily access these people directly at their homes. ... You can control your employees at the workplace, but once they leave the workplace, it's impossible," Deshpande said.

But then the real fun began. This, according to a March, 2012 article on the BCTGM website:

When the 18 bakers, who are employed by the Bread of Life Franchise which owns all Panera locations along the I-94 corridor of Southwest Michigan, decided they had enough of being improperly compensated as skilled bakers, they reached out to Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) through the union’s website, BCTGM.org. The Panera bakers were concerned with inadequate medical insurance, insufficient time off, unsafe working conditions and improvements to the bakeries that were being ignored by management. When 90 percent of the Panera bakers signed union cards, they approached management and requested recognition as a union.

Rather than honoring their skilled bakers by recognizing them as a union, the owners of the Michigan Panera franchise hired a law-firm to delay a union vote by claiming the I-94 Division was not an appropriate unit. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled these bakers were indeed an appropriate unit and directed a secret ballot election be held on Thursday, March 22, 2012.

Bread of Life/Panera Bread also hired one of the largest known Union Busting Consulting firms to fight its own employees. “I felt like we were Prisoners of Panera, rather than Bakers of Panera,” one of the Panera bakers told BCTGM International Representative John Price. “They would work us all night and then force us to attend mandatory captive audience meetings in the morning.”  Another Panera baker recalls, “They would keep us sleep deprived, hungry and then cram us with anti-union Panera propaganda.”

The workers held together through eight weeks of threats, intimidation and other tactics used by management in an attempt to pressure the workers to vote against the union.

Following the NLRB election on Thursday morning, which had voting at each of the six Panera café locations in Southwestern Michigan, the NLRB Agents counted the ballots and announced the bakers had won by a two-to-one margin to be represented by the BCTGM.

By September, nearly six months later, the company still refused to recognize the union.

Contacted by The Herald-Palladium, the company issued the following written statement regarding the dispute: "There is a process in place to deal with the issues that remain concerning the union vote. The union and the company are both aware of the process and have agreed to see it to conclusion. These are not processes that move quickly. As the process moves forward we're continuing to work closely with our bakers and run our business to serve our guests daily the best we can."

John Price, BCTGM representative for the Panera Bread bakers, said in a phone interview Friday that the company failed to address workers' concerns before they sought to join a union and have failed to do so since. He said that following the bakers' vote March 23 to join the union the company filed an unfair labor practice charge objecting to the election.

The workers also filed unfair labor practice charges, listing 43 complaints about the company's treatment of them, Price said. He said that after an investigation of several weeks, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed the company's charges against the workers but found merit to the union's charges against the company and scheduled a federal hearing before an administrative law judge. Before the scheduled hearing the company decided to settle the complaint, Price said.

But, he said, the company has not lived up to terms of the settlement, which was to include withdrawing all objections to the union vote and back pay to the bakers to resolve a failure to bargain. He said the workers are still without a contract.

Now jump to February 16, 2013 (last week) when Dave Jamieson at HuffPo picks up the story:

Eventually, 90 percent of the Panera bakers signed cards authorizing a union election. But according to a complaint filed last year by a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that enforces labor law, Bread of Life managers allegedly violated labor law in trying to dissuade workers from joining the union. [Paul] Saber was personally responsible for many of the violations, the complaint stated. Bread of Life has since settled the complaint without admitting any wrongdoing.

Among the allegations in the complaint, in the weeks leading up to the election Bread of Life told employees not to sign union authorization cards; asked employees who'd signed them to retract them; launched a website designed "to discourage support" for the union; promised workers better employee benefits if they declined to unionize; and threatened employees with "loss of benefits" if they did unionize.

The effort also included at least two required meetings with management and a consultant, who outlined the reasons why the employees didn't need a union. The bakers say the meetings were held at hotels in Kalamazoo, Mich., just before the union election, and started in the morning, right after they'd finished their overnight shifts, and lasted several hours.

According to the NLRB complaint, Saber promised workers promotions if they didn't unionize and told them he would fight the union "until his dying breath." He also said it would be "futile" for them to unionize because "he would delay the certification ... as long as possible no matter the cost."

According to bakers who attended the meetings, the pressure from Saber also included religious appeals. Well-known as a Christian, Saber has been a board member of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and the name Bread of Life (like another Saber holding, Manna Development) has obvious religious connotations. (The website for the Graham organization tells the story of Saber once proselytizing a friend as the pair drove together in a Ferrari during a Ronald McDonald House Charities fundraiser.)

According to the bakers, Saber said workers shouldn't unionize in part because Bread of Life is a Christian company that looks after its own.

"We had to hear about how he was a good Christian who'd take care of us so we needed to stop this union nonsense," said [Kathleen] VonEitzen, whose version of events was corroborated by Jared Miller, another baker in attendance. "They asked us to delay the vote.

"I read the Bible regularly," VonEitzen added. "We don’t have the same Bible."

So there it stands.  Add to their plight the fact that, thanks to Michigan's Republican governor and Republican legislature, our once-great state is now a Right-to-Work state, which means further restrictions on union organizing, moving the effort from "almost impossible" to "damned impossible".

So we wait and see.

But one more thing:  This is not an indictment of all Panera stores.  This is one small franchise, remember.  The Panera mother company, in fact, does some admirable work in the inner cities and low income areas with their Panera Cares Community Cafes. Anyone can come into the community cafes and get a hot meal for whatever they can afford to pay.  And if they can't pay, they can volunteer an hour of their time working in the cafe.  Their motto is, "We're not offering a hand out, we're offering a hand up."

I'm impressed, honestly.

Now if they could just train a certain Bread of Life franchisee to follow Panera's "Live Consciously" model.  

I'm pretty sure there's something about that, even in Paul Saber's Bible.