Loss in prosecutor’s race now distant memory for Viviano

Gov. Rick Snyder received praise from far and wide – from Republicans and Democrats – on Wednesday for his choice of Macomb Chief Circuit Judge David Viviano to serve on the state Supreme Court. And it was justified.

A Republican, Viviano is respected in Macomb County legal circles for his humility, fairness and intelligence. But he also had a big advantage as Snyder sorted through all the contenders for the open seat on the high court.

Viviano is good friends with Robert Young, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. In fact, they’re more than friends. Apparently they are intellectual soul mates who engage in long, deep conversations about the law and public policy.

Within minutes after Snyder announced his appointment, Young put out a fairly lengthy press release that gushed about Viviano’s qualities: “exceptional … outstanding … invaluable … forward-thinking.”

What a heady day it was for Judge Viviano. His loss to Eric Smith in the 2004 election for an open seat for Macomb County prosecutor must seem like ancient history. That loss, coming when Viviano was just 32 years old, was followed by election to the circuit court two years later and an elevation to chief judge in January 2012.

Following that 2004 election, no one could have dreamed how quickly Viviano’s fortunes would rise.

Could it be that’s what happens when you lose to Smith?

If so, Mike Wrathell, hang in there. You’ve got big things coming your way.

Poll: Don't put guns in schools

While Senate Republicans in Lansing prepare another attempt to legalize concealed weapons in school buildings, a new poll shows that putting guns in schools is unpopular.

Voters remain divided over putting armed guards in schools but only 20 percent favor allowing teachers to have firearms in the classroom, according to the statewide survey released this morning by Lambert, Edwards & Associates and Denno Research. Just 3 percent want to let parents carry a gun in schools.

The Feb. 23-24 poll of 600 likely voters found that when respondents were asked who should be allowed to carry a gun in schools, 43 percent supported armed security guards and 34 percent said schools should remain gun-free zones.

“Similar to the national debate, this poll indicates that Michigan citizens are still sharply divided on guns in their schools,” said Jeff Lambert, LE&A president. “No group we tested polled over 50 percent, which tells us that the idea of putting guns in schools is certainly not a popular one. Certainly, the public’s desire to change Michigan’s gun laws as they relate to schools just isn’t that strong yet.”

Forty-two percent of respondents who identified themselves as Republicans favored allowing security guards to carry guns in schools, compared to 38 percent of self-identified Democrats. Forty-one percent of Democrats said no one should carry guns in schools, versus only 16 percent of Republicans, Lambert said. Thirty-five percent of females said no one should carry a gun in school while only 25 percent of males agreed.

Viviano for Supreme Court, Part II

The buzz in Macomb County political and legal circles is that David Viviano, chief judge of the Macomb County Circuit Court, will be named as the new Supreme Court justice by Gov. Rick Snyder this afternoon.

Viviano is a staunch Republican who contributes to various GOP campaigns and he is apparently good friends with Justice Bob Young.
He is part of a family dynasty, so to speak, in the Macomb County judiciary. His father Antonio, was a prominent defense attorney and later served on the circuit court until he faced mandatory retirement two years ago. Kathryn Viviano, David's sister, was elected to fill the vacant seat.
David, after losing a 2004 bid for county prosecutor against Democrat Eric Smith, was elected to the court in 2006. He was chosen by the Supreme Court to serve as Macomb's chief judge in January 2012.

Viviano was off work for part of this week. While he's gone, a visiting judge is filling in -- his father, Antonio.

Macomb's Viviano as new Supreme Court justice?

The buzz in Macomb County political and legal circles is that David Viviano, chief judge of the Macomb County Circuit Court, will be named as the new Supreme Court justice by Gov. Rick Snyder this afternoon.

Poll: Snyder’s days as a Republican moderate are over

A new poll released this morning finds that Gov. Rick Snyder’s popularity is at a low level, in part because moderates and independents no longer think of the Republican incumbent as “one of us.”

To start with, 45 percent of the 600 likely voters polled Feb. 23-24 by Lambert, Edwards & Associates, along with Dennis Denno Research, had an unfavorable opinion of Snyder. Some 38 percent had a favorable opinion and nearly 17 percent were unsure. That third figure is a very high number and suggests that many voters are having second thoughts about One Tough Nerd.

Last weekend’s state GOP convention showed that the tea party still has a strong presence in the Republican Party, and Snyder is not their favorite. Among GOP poll respondents, only 40 percent had a favorable opinion of Snyder – not that much different than Democrats, where 38 percent had a favorable opinion.

The Republican governor’s decision to sign right to work legislation also has hurt him with voters, the LE&A/Denno Reserach survey shows. Forty-seven percent of likely voters said they’re less likely or much less likely to vote for Snyder because he signed the bill in December, while just 29 percent said they’re more likely or much more likely to vote for him because of that issue. Twenty percent said it would make no difference in their vote.

While three-fourths of Democrats and two-thirds of union households said they were less likely to vote for Snyder in 2014 because of right to work, a majority of independent voters – 51 percent – also said the move made them less likely to back Snyder. Only 19 percent of independent voters said they were more likely to vote for Snyder because he signed right to work legislation.

The disappointment expressed by independents could become a major factor if Snyder, as expected, seeks re-election in 2014.

Though he campaigned as a moderate three years ago, most voters now classify Snyder’s political leanings as either hard right (24 percent) or slightly right (29 percent). Only 15 percent view him as a centrist, 10 percent say he leans left and 22 percent are undecided.

“Voters heading into 2014 will have a clearer view of how Rick Snyder will govern if given another four-year term than they did in 2010, when he was a political newcomer,” said Jeff Lambert, president and managing partner of Lambert, Edwards & Associates. “Without knowing which Democrat he’ll be running against in 2014, it’s hard at this point to predict whether voters will rally around him for a second term.”  

Asked about his job performance, voters were equally split, with a third giving him high marks, a third medium marks and a third low marks. Just 2 percent of voters were undecided about Snyder’s job performance in the latest poll, compared to 12 percent last summer.

“Both his personal popularity and his job rating are lower than an incumbent would want heading into re-election,” said Dennis Denno, president of Denno Research. “If his so-so ratings continue, he could have a tough time in 2014.”

Denno also noted that Snyder now is seen by most voters as clearly in the Republican camp.

“As much as Snyder says he’s a moderate, Michigan voters don’t appear to think of him that way,” Denno said.

Is it possible that the federal debt crisis doesn't exist?

Jeff Spross, a blogger for the liberal site Think Progress, goes out on a limb in his newest post by attempting to demolish conventional thinking on the sequester cuts and long-term federal debt.

“... One might think no serious and responsible American can ignore the unassailable truth: America faces a debt crisis, which we must act on immediately and decisively,” he wrote.

“Well, not quite. The actual truth is that the debt everyone’s freaking out about does not exist.”

What kind of left-wing nuttiness is this? Well, hold on. Spross is not pulling some liberal, utopian vision out of thin air. He offers some valid, thought-provoking examples of how difficult it can be to project revenues and spending far into the future.

Congressman Paul Ryan, perhaps the ultimate Republican budget hawk, has repeatedly referred to the Congressional Budget Office’s predicted debt load in 2037. That’s a look more than two decades into the future.

Here’s Spross:

“Imagine trying to model the 2011 economy in 1985. Things you’d never see coming include (among other things) the Internet, fracking, massive advances in computing power, the renewable energy boom, three wars, a massive recession, and Harry Potter. And predictions can be hard even over shorter time frames. In 1995, CBO predictedthe deficit in 2000 would be well over $200 billion. We ran a surplus of $236 billion.

“In fact, Ryan plastered dramatic graphs of debt going out 75 years onto everything in sight while stumping for his last budget. Forget predicting 2011 in 1985. That’s like predicting 2011 in 1940.”

Spross uses this premise to question the entire Capitol Hill process of crafting budgets based on a pile of uncertainties, particularly the future costs of Medicare and Medicaid.

“… The general assumption within the Beltway -- that we’ll write legislation, the CBO will tell us it solves the problem, then we’ll pass it and the problem will be solved -- gets it backwards. The central debt problem of growing health care costs is something CBO probably can’t tell us whether we’ve solved until we’ve already solved it.

"Case in point: CBO just significantly downgradedits projections for Medicare and Medicaid spending over the next decade, precisely because growth in health care costs has unexpectedlyslowedto a 50-year low since 2009. A big part of the slowdown is the recession, and so probably temporary, but lots of economists thinka big part is also durable, structural change to health care markets.”

Here's some Macomb history you probably don't know

Hurricane Isaac covered Fort Macomb in Louisiana with eight inches of mud last August. Oakland County students spent their winter break removing the dirt and overgrowth at the 1822 landmark.

 A group of Royal Oak High School students spent their  winter break in Louisiana, cleaning up damage caused by Hurricane Isaac, including Fort Macomb, which was named in honor of Macomb County's namesake, Gen. Alexander Macomb.

The fort, built in 1822, is located about 50 miles southeast of New Orleans. Cathy Kavanaugh of the Royal Oak Daily Tribune, in a story she wrote about the ROHS volunteer project came up with an interesting nugget of information about Gen. Macomb.

Macomb won acclaim during the War of 1812 as a brigadier general who outfoxed a British force of 10,500 with only 1,500 troops. In the weeks leading up to the Battle of Plattsburgh on Sept. 11, 1814, Macomb and his men moved trees and created fake roads that led the British into dead-end traps. They became sitting-duck targets for the waiting American soldiers.

Fort Macomb was never the site of a battle. During the Civil War, union troops took it over after the capture of New Orleans, but not before Confederate soldiers destroyed the guns and burned the wooden structures.

Although the brick structures have been decaying over the decades, a portion of the fort's moat is used as a marina and people like to picnic there.

After Hurricane Isaac hit in August 2012, some parts of Fort Macomb were covered in eight inches of mud. The Oakland County students shoveled it up and hauled it away in wheel barrows. They also pulled weeds that had overtaken the grounds.

“The public wanted to use it again and now they are within reach to open in the spring,” said teacher Steve Chisnell, who supervised the work. “We removed all the overgrowth. We also excavated a brick staircase that was looking more like an earthen ramp. This helped the historians learn more about the brick restoration needed.”

Congress ignores Simpson-Bowles solution (again)

As Democrats and Republicans mindlessly bash each other on the upcoming sequester cuts, it’s worth noting that the sequester was designed to be so distasteful that it would force Congress to act. Now, our dysfunctional Congress is willing to swallow its own poison pill rather than act in a responsible way and work toward a compromise.

What’s especially disturbing is that Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles stepped up again last week and offered a sober, stable way out of this mess. And everyone on Capitol Hill ignored them.

The new Simpson-Bowles plan offers a big dose of old-fashioned bipartisanship, as did their 2010 proposal. It’s a mix of spending cuts and revenue enhancements through tax reforms.

But in Washington, where intelligent discourse no longer exists, the grown-up, realistic approach taken by Simpson-Bowles to the federal budget mess is hopelessly out of step.

Already, the plan produced by these two Washington wisemen – is yesterday’s news, left in the dust as Twitter and Facebook steer the national conversation in new directions by the hour.

At the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that has been way ahead of the curve on budget issues for many years, the new Simpson-Bowles blueprint was endorsed as a “credible, responsible and comprehensive framework for addressing the nation’s growing debt burden.”

As the March 1 deadline for sequestration rapidly approaches, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, a Concord Coalition co-chair said this:

“Some people on both sides of the aisle seem content to let a disaster hit, blame it on the other side, and then try to clean up the damage. Our nation can't continue to afford such political brinksmanship. Neither side is ever going to get 100 percent of what it wants no matter how many gimmicks are used to gain the upper hand in negotiations.”

Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, is trying to talk some sense into our lawmakers before allow implementation of a plan that everyone in Washington agrees is a bad approach.
“In last year’s Strengthening of America – Our Children’s Futureinitiative, undertaken with a number of other organizations, we found that bipartisan consensus is both essential and possible to achieve a fiscally sustainable plan to strengthen the economy, save future generations from rising debt, and protect the nation’s security. The new Simpson-Bowles framework is fully consistent with our conclusions,” said Bixby.

“The ‘sequestration’ is fast approaching and must be dealt with, but it is the long-term debt burden facing this country that threatens our existence as a global power. More must be done to bring health care costs under control. The tax code is still in need of pro-growth reform. Social Security still faces a growing gap between benefit payments and dedicated revenues.

“As stated in the Strengthening of America report: ‘Fortunately, there are those in Washington who put the country’s future before their political parties. Americans should get behind these courageous leaders — and soon. We can no longer afford to act out Winston Churchill’s prediction that America will always do the right thing, after it has explored every other alternative. It’s time to do the right thing.’”