EDITORIAL: Knee-Jerk Liberalism Doesn’t Benefit Ann Arbor
ANN ARBOR CITY Council members recently passed a resolution urging the State’s Attorney General to stop defending Michigan’s ban against gay marriage. In 2011, Ann Arbor City Council went on the record objecting to a Republican-backed drive in Lansing to outlaw domestic partner benefits for public employees in Michigan. In 2010, city officials passed a resolution opposing the Michigan GOP’s HB 5039, which sought to void policies or ordinances adopted by local governments that included as a protected class any classification not included in the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. That same year, City Council unanimously backed a resolution that condemned the actions of Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell who had harassed U-M student body president Chris Armstrong.
Each of these resolutions represented knee-jerk liberalism and targeted the lowest-hanging fruit, as it were.
Of course Gov. Snyder’s signature on a bill which banned domestic partner benefits for public employees was mean-spirited and wrong. Of course U-M student Chris Armstrong should not be harassed by anyone. Of course local governments which choose to include protections of gays and lesbians in their own ordinances should be left to decide that issue. Gov. Snyder’s record on gay rights is abysmal. His current suggestion to expand Michigan’s civil rights protections to gays and lesbians, while long overdue, is shameless political pandering.
While our city council members have repeatedly proposed resolutions dealing with gay rights, those same people have been mute on the minimum wage battle raging in our state and the nation. Seattle’s mayor Ed Murray proposed a $15 minimum wage which, Mayor Murray said, “would improve the lives of municipal workers.” Ann Arbor’s Mayor voted for a minimum wage ordinance and then voted to exempt his own city from adhering to it.
With the passage of its $15 minimum wage, Seattle’s mayor, city council, educational leaders, unions and business leaders showed the nation that socio-economic justice and economic development are not mutually exclusive. In Ann Arbor, local elected officials university and business leaders supported a tax hike to fund expanded bus service in part, they said, to get low-paid workers who can’t afford to live in the city to their jobs. We believe it’s better to fight poverty rather than raise taxes.
While Ann Arbor’s state, county and local officials attended President Obama’s speech at U-M in which he argued for a $10.10 federal minimum wage, these politicians did not publicly support the Raise Michigan movement, a coalition which sought—through a ballot initiative—to raise Michigan’s minimum wage to $10.10. No Ann Arbor City Council member has sponsored a resolution to support President Obama’s $10.10 campaign or any resolution in favor of raising Michigan’s minimum wage above $9.45, which represents poverty-level wages.
In 2009, Ann Arbor City Council members passed a resolution condemning the Michigan GOP’s proposed budget. In addition, council members wrote in a press release that Gov. Jennifer Granholm should refuse to go along with any proposal that would cut statutory revenue sharing to Michigan municipalities.
No Ann Arbor City Council member has ever proposed a resolution which criticizes Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s economic and tax policies. The taxation of pensions and cuts to the EITC have adversely impacted retirees, families and children who live in the city. Knee-jerk liberalism benefits the few while pandering to the many. Such political machinations accomplish little and ignore the socio-economic and social justice challenges that face Ann Arbor and its residents.
This newspaper’s Editorial Board is wrong. Armstrong was not harassed. Constitutionally-protected activities, such as protesting, do not constitute “harassment” under the law. Armstrong’s openly homosexual Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman devised the false 2010 “harassment” narrative, which the partisan fools on the Ann Arbor City Council reflexively pushed. Shame on all of them – and shame on the Editorial Board for succumbing to its own “knee-jerk liberalism.”
Thank you for your comment. It is the position of the newspaper’s Editorial Board that Mr. Armstrong was harassed and that no individual, either gay or straight, should be targeted for harassment. The Editorial Board expressed no opinion about the Ann Arbor City Council’s resolution.
I agree with the premise of your editorial – that the Ann Arbor City Council has a long, sorry history of passing highly-partisan, ridiculous resolutions. The 2010 resolution condemning Shirvell was particularly galling. It was authored by lesbian councilwoman Sandi Smith. Shirvell never “harassed” Armstrong. Shirvell engaged in constitutionally-protected speech by protesting against Armstrong and criticizing Armstrong on an Internet blog. Armstrong was a public figure, given that he was the first self-proclaimed openly homosexual student body president at the University of Michigan and had a lengthy history of extreme homosexual activism in the public arena. The Ann Arbor City Council’s resolution condemning Shirvell is not worth the piece of paper it’s printed on.