Study Says Justices Used Power to Overrule Decisions
They Didn’t Agree With

LANSING – A Wayne State University study concludes that the Michigan Supreme Court abused its power from 1999-2008. The author of the study, Law Professor Robert Sedler, says the Court's decisions from that period lack legitimacy.

"What has happened in Michigan, pure and simple, is that a majority of the Justices on the Michigan Supreme Court have used their power to overrule prior decisions with which they disagreed," Professor Sedler said.

Some examples include making significant changes in Michigan's injury law in favor of defendants over plaintiffs and significant changes in worker's compensation law in favor of employers over workers.

"This study proves that Young and the rest of the ‘Gang of Four,' used their positions to achieve the results they wanted: ruling for corporations and insurance companies and ignoring injured workers and accident victims," Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer said. "Electing Diane Hathaway in 2008 was a big first step toward righting the wrongs of this Court, but we need to defeat Bob Young this year to protect Michigan residents from his harmful decisions."

Read the study:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1520719

Further information is available via the Michigan Democratic Party: http://michigandems.com/newsroom.php?id=238.

Wondering what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- President Obama's stimulus bill -- has accomplished? Look at this:

One year ago, after tens of thousands of you shared stories and called your representatives, the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

And while this anniversary isn't a cause for celebration, there is reason to be optimistic. This chart makes it clear: We're on the road to recovery.

Still, we know there is a long way to go. Many Americans are still struggling, and creating jobs remains President Obama's top priority.

Click here to learn more about the President's record on the economy, what we're doing to put more Americans back to work, and get easy-to-share information you can pass on to friends and family:

http://my.barackobama.com/Recovery

Thanks for making change happen,

David Plouffe

Longtime WCDP activist Doug Kelley recently responded to a January 23, 2010 column in the NY Times by Bob Herbert where Herbert criticized Democrats for not understanding the current economic crisis.

Doug’s Letter to the Editor (as of this posting date, it has not been published by the Times):

To: Letters@NYTimes.com
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2010
Subject: Amen! to Bob Herbert's Jan. 23 column

To the Editor:

As an 80-year-old hyperactive Democrat who was there to cheer Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (thanks, John Kerry, for inviting him) and Obama's acceptance speech at the '08 Convention in Denver, and who volunteered in five states to help elect him, I'd like to offer an amen! to Bob Herbert's January 23 call for greater administration activism on behalf of both the urban and the rural poor and unemployed.

Virtually everyone gives high marks to FDR''s Civilian Conservation Corps. Why not re-create it (racially integrated this time) and thus put many thousands of the unemployed to work on environmental and infrastructure projects, including weatherization, and installing solar panels and wind turbines. U.S. wind turbine manufacturers need mass markets -- let's create them! Americans with Peace Corps experience -- there are many thousands of us, of all ages and races -- could be well-qualified staff members for such a born-again CCC.

Douglas C. Kelley, Univ. of Michigan-Flint retiree

David Plouffe, campaign manager of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, and author of the best seller Audacity to Win, recently returned to political work. At President Obama’s request Plouffe will help with 2010 congressional and governors’ races primarily at the Democratic National Committee and in consultation with the White House.

One of Plouffe’s first public statements was published in the Washington Post on January 24th, 2010, titled: "November Doesn’t Need to be a Nightmare for Democrats".

Read it and join the conversation.

Vice-President Biden’s office has released some data showing that the Democratic supported economic stimulus, the Recovery Act (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Obama on 2/17/09), has had a significant, positive impact on job creation and economic growth.

Some key facts are:

The evidence is clear – and growing by the day – that the Recovery Act is working to cushion the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and lay a new foundation for economic growth.

• According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Recovery Act is already responsible for as many as 2.4 million jobs through the end of 2009.
• Analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers also found that the Recovery Act is responsible for about 2 million jobs – a figure in line with estimates from private forecasters like IHS Global and Moody's Economy.
• Last month, we learned our economy grew 2.2 percent in the third quarter – the largest growth in two years and something many economists say is largely due to the Recovery Act .

In the eleven months since the Recovery Act was signed into law, we have:

• Cut taxes for 95 percent of working families through the Making Work Pay tax Credit – that's $37 billion in tax relief for 110 million working families in 2009.
• Made loans to nearly 40,000 small businesses through the Recovery Act, providing them with over $18 billion in much-needed capital.
• Funded over 11,500 transportation construction projects nationwide, ranging from highway construction to airport improvement projects – of which, more than 7,800 are already underway.
• Begun or accelerated work at more than 51 Superfund sites from the National Priority List.
• Started more than 2,700 construction and improvement projects at over 350 military facilities nationwide.
• Made multi-billion dollar investments in innovation, science and technology that are laying the foundation for our 21 st century economy including:
  • $2.4 billion in grants to companies and educational institutions in over 20 states to fund 48 new advanced battery and electric drive projects that will help power the next generation of advanced vehicles.
  • $3.4 billion in grants to private companies, utilities, manufacturers and cities to fund smart energy grid projects that will support tens of thousands of jobs and benefit consumers in 49 states.
  • The first of over $7 billion in awards to bring broadband to communities where there is little or no access – a significant step forward in driving local economic development
  • More than $5 billion in grants to fund 12,000 cutting-edge medical research projects at research and educational institutions in every state across the country.
• Provided critical relief for state governments facing record budget shortfalls, including:
  • Made more than $55 billion available to help prevent cuts to Medicaid programs across the country
  • Nearly $60 billion in funding for education – a move that governors tell us is already responsible for creating and saving over 300,000 education jobs.
• But we are just getting started with the Recovery Act - the best is yet to come.
• The Recovery Act was designed to spend money gradually over time in order to sustain a true recovery – with peak spending occurring early this year.
• Signature programs that provide some of the biggest employment bang for the buck are in the pipeline. In the coming months, we will begin to put billions of dollars to work:
  • Laying the foundation for a high speed rail network here in the U.S. – a move that will not only create jobs and drive economic growth, but jump-start a critical element of our 21 st century infrastructure
  • Funding some of the most innovative and effective education programs across the country through Race to the Top competitive grant awards
  • Jump-starting some of the most innovative and worthwhile transportation construction projects across the country through competitive TIGER awards
• In fact, we expect outlays for projects overall to double in the first two quarters of this year.
• And the job impact of Recovery Act projects already underway is in many cases just beginning to be felt.
  • While the experts agree the Recovery Act is already responsible for more than 1 million jobs, 75 percent of recipients that reported on their Recovery Act spending indicated their projects are less than half complete - meaning there is even more job impact from those dollars to come.
  • We remain right on-target to create and save at least 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

Right now, some of the Recovery Act's most innovative and effective programs – the ones that provide some of the greatest long-term economic bang for the buck - are so vastly oversubscribed, the Administration has recently announced plans to extend or expand them.

• Just last month, the Vice President announced that the Administration will provide an additional $5 billion in 48c tax credits for renewable energy manufacturing projects because of the overwhelming demand for the initial $2.3 billion provided by the Recovery Act.
• And last week, the President announced plans to seek additional funding in his budget to expand the Race to the Top Program, which was initially funded with $4.35 billion through the Recovery Act last year.

Also, many of the President's recent job creation proposals are rooted in the early successes of the Recovery Act. He has proposed:

• Building on the tax cuts and small business assistance in the Recovery Act with a complete elimination of capital gains taxes on small business investment.
• Building on the Recovery Act's initial investment in the nation's infrastructure with additional dollars to continue modernizing our transportation and communications networks.
• Expanding some Recovery Act initiatives to promote energy efficiency and clean energy jobs which have proven particularly popular and effective.

The Recovery Act was never meant to replace dollar for dollar or job for job what we have lost – no single government program ever could.

That's why the President continues to work every day to find more ways to put people back to work and drive economic growth.

But eleven months in, experts ranging from private forecasters to governors on both sides of the aisle say the Recovery Act has helped pull us back from the brink of economic disaster and is helping lay a firm foundation for our economic recovery.

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING:

• CBO, Congress's nonpartisan research body, said that between 800,000 and 2.4 million jobs could be attributed to the stimulus. "[Romer] also pointed to private-sector economic analyses estimating that stimulus added between 1 million and 1.6 million jobs and between 1.5 and 3.1 percentage points of GDP growth in the fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office attributes between 800,000 to 2.4 million jobs and 1.2 to 3.1 percentage points of economic growth to stimulus." [CNNMoney.com, 1/13/10]
• Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com says the Recovery Act is "contributing to ending the recession" and "impacting unemployment." "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do — it is contributing to ending the recession . . . In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus." [ New York Times, 11/20/09]

Further information is available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/recovery.

Heritage Newspapers recently sent WCDP Chair Stu Dowty a questionnaire about county Democratic Party activities and a number of other topics, including health care reform. They posted his answers on the Saline Reporter’s website on Jan. 27th.

Special thanks to Washtenaw County Commissioner Kristin Judge who pursued the Saline Reporter to cover Democratic activities in the county after they published a lengthy interview with the Republican county chair several months ago.

Check out the questionnaire and answers. Questions are in original form as sent by the newspaper. If inclined, add a comment to the article and let the paper and its readers know what Democrats are thinking.

Photo of Stu Dowty courtesy of Anne Savage. Visit her web site, Flickr Page, and blog.