RandySF
RandySF's JournalWayne County Commission rejects Ficano's request for taxpayer-funded lawyer.
DETROIT (WXYZ) - The Wayne County Commissioners rejected a $150,000 contract for outside legal counsel – and they’re calling this a victory for the taxpayers.
There was quite a surprise disclosure during Thursday’s meeting.
The Wayne County Commission said no thanks to a high-powered criminal defense team.
After the 7 Action News Investigators exposed the severance scandal and the FBI probe into Wayne County – Robert Ficano’s administration brought in high profile attorney Tom Cranmer to help the county comply with subpoenas. The administration has already spent nearly $50,000 on Cranmer and his team of lawyers from Miller Canfield.
On Wednesday, Ficano’s executive team asked the Commission for another $350,000 for Cranmer. The Commissioners balked – so Assistant County Executive Alan Helmkamp offered to drop the price.
“We moved to reduce the amount from $350,000 to $150,000,” said Helmkamp.
But the Commissioners weren’t buying it.
“We all know that once you come in for $150,000, you’re going to come back for more money, and it’s going to end up being $800,000 or more,” said Commissioner Laura Cox.
The result – a unanimous rejection of the Miller Canfield contract.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/wayne_county/wayne-county-rejects-legal-contract-fee#ixzz1ggcMfZ5m
Former Texas lawmaker writes tell-all about Perry's secret sex life.
Glen Maxey, the first openly gay member of the Texas State Legislature and longtime Democratic activist, spent most of last summer helping a reporter for a "national news outlet" nail down persistent rumors of Rick Perry's sexual relationships with men. The story got killed. So Maxey has published an e-book laying out the evidence. Among the charges: Rick Perry has a small dick.
In Head Figure Head: The Search for the Hidden Life of Rick Perry, which was published today, Maxey tells the story of a four-month investigation (conducted, oddly, mostly through Facebook messages and chats that he liberally reproduces) he collaborated on with an unnamed reporter. According to Maxey—who, while obviously a partisan, is as far as I can tell not a crank and served 12 years in the state legislature—he located two men who claimed to have had sex with Perry. One was a male prostitute who told associates that Perry had hired him three or four times a year for hotel parties with Perry and an aide. The other was a man who responded to a Craigslist ad allegedly posted by Perry. Along the way, there are dozens of other more tenuous second-hand reports, including one man linked to Perry who pointedly refused to deny the accusations.
It's all very anonymous and hazy and who knows if any of it is true. But the fact that this is coming from a fairly prominent Texas political figure brings it out of the realm of pure rumor and offers an engaging little glimpse into how your news sausage is made (or in this case, not made).
http://gawker.com/5868489/all-your-rick-perry-gay-sex-rumors-collected-in-one-handy-book
Milky Way's Monster Black Hole Gets Colossal Meal
The giant black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy will soon rip apart a vast cloud of gas in a cosmic feast that could reveal just how supermassive black holes gobble their meals, scientists say.
The black hole, which contains about 4.3 million times the mass of the sun,is thought to lurk at the heart of the Milky Way. Scientists have named the monster black hole Sagittarius A* and pinpointed its location based on clues from intense radio emissions — matter near a black hole can release extraordinary amounts of light, including radio waves, as it gets super-heated rushing toward the point of no return.
Aside from radio waves and some modest X-ray or infrared flares, Sagittarius A* is surprisingly faint, suggesting that activity around it currently is very low, researchers said. This limits what investigators can deduce about its properties and behavior, as well as those of the other supermassive black holes thought to dwell in the cores of virtually all large galaxies.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45671485?ocid=ansmsnbc11#.TupHAX2t7AY
United Wisconsin sets new goal of 720,000 signatures.
Just four weeks into the recall campaign, and as Scott Walker continues to mislead voters, United Wisconsin announced that 507,533 people have already signed a petition to recall Scott Walker and is releasing its new signature collection goal of 720,277 – nearly 200,000 more than needed.
“Scott Walker continues to spend millions on misleading TV ads trying to convince voters that his drastic cuts to education and other “reforms” are working,” said Meagan Mahaffey, United Wisconsin’s Executive Director. “But the people of Wisconsin are not buying his lies, and are moving at record pace to stop Walker’s destruction, and recall him from office.”
The movement to recall Walker continues to move quickly. In the first 28 days, Wisconsin voters signed the petition at a rate of over 18,000 per day. In the first 12 days, more than 300,000 signatures were collected from all 72 counties in Wisconsin.
Specific signature totals from selected counties include the following:
8,007 signatures or 128% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Douglas County
22,365 signatures or 124% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Eau Claire County
21,558 signatures or 91% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Rock County
7,375 signatures or 84% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Oneida County
6,972 signatures or 81% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Grant County
The newly released signature collection goal of 720,277 is equal to 33% of the 2010 General Election turnout. Only 540,208 signatures or 25% of the 2010 General Election turnout is required to trigger a recall election.
http://www.unitedwisconsin.com/
Walker recall petitioners have 507,000 signatures
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Organizers of an effort to recall Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office say they have collected nearly enough signatures to force an election.
The United Wisconsin coalition said Thursday that more than 507,000 signatures had been collected in just 30 days. They need 540,208 signatures to force the recall election sometime in 2012. Petitions are due Jan. 17.
The coalition says its goal is to collect 720,000 signatures.
http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2011/dec/15/walker-recall-petitioners-have-507000-signatures/
Major announcement coming tomorrow from the Walker recall movement.
"It's virtually certain at this point that we have. The official word will come from Mike Tate tomorrow at noon, but I'd advise Mr Walker to start gathering boxes. He can take his baseball bat out of OUR Governor's office as well.
Even though it appears we already have the signatures required, please keep gathering them. The more we have the stronger our message to his allies at the federal level and in other states becomes. We still have time to double the number required, which would mean an absolute guarantee that Walker is toast since 25% of the voters is the threshold. (Double is 50%, and would make his running again an exercise in futility.)
If even one of the four state Senators being recalled with him is also over it's threshold, it means that Wisconsin will be changing leadership in that body as well!!"
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/major-announcement-coming-tomorrow-from-the-walker-recall-movement-have-we-passed-the-required-numb/question-2339357/
RUMOR: WI has more than enough signatures to recall Walker. (UPDATED)
UPDATE: This was just posted on the Wisconsin Democratic Party website:
At noon on December 15th the Democratic Party of Wisconsin will broadcast a special update on the campaign to recall Scott Walker LIVE at http://www.WisDems.org/Live.
Please consider making a donation of $10 or more to show Scott Walker and his cronies that you stand with the people of Wisconsin prior to our live webcast.
https://wisdems.zissousecure.com/contribute/recallhq/live
Rumor #1: There is a quiet buzz flowing around social media that suggests we are over the necessary number of signatures to invoke a recall. As you know, that is 540,000 and some odd change. Of course, we cannot and will not let up, as we need 700,000, and it does get more difficult. But I must say, even with so many people having signed, we still are getting plenty of signatures, and the really big story of the recall is how successful it has been throughout the state. Walker continues to insist that recall workers come from out of state and are paid. While a few regional coordinators are indeed paid by the DPW (Democratic Party of Wisconsin), the tens of thousands of volunteers who take to the streets throughout the entire state are not. They are committed, they are rugged, they are undaunted, and they are insistent. The rightwing is getting very reactive because they can feel this intensity.
And This Just out from Mike Tate, Chair of DPW, so it is no longer a rumor: Be prepared for a big announcement at noon tomorrow......
Don't let up. If we hear tomorrow that we have 550,000 signatures, then let's set our sights for 700,000. Hell, let's go for a million! Even if the Panthers didn't beat the Badgers at Basketball, we can certainly beat the state of Ohio at protesting the extremist agenda of the reptilian right.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/14/1045256/-Around-Wisconsin:-Rumors,-Pictures-and-Announcement-Tomorrow?via=siderec
Wayne County Exec.: $350K for legal costs
Detroit — Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano is so swamped with FBI subpoenas he wants taxpayers to spend nearly $400,000 for a criminal defense attorney to answer them.
His administration today is set to ask county commissioners to consider a $350,000 contract with Thomas Cranmer and his colleagues and Miller Canfield to gather materials sought by a grand jury through eight subpoenas.
An incredulous Commissioner Laura Cox, R-Livonia, said that's atop almost $50,000 the county has paid Cranmer — so the scandal that has swirled around Ficano since September is impacting taxpayers.
"Why do we have to pay a criminal defense attorney to do this is beyond me," Cox said.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20111214/METRO01/112140355/Ficano-350K-legal-costs?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
Republicans Warn Bain Capital Could Cripple Romney’s Campaign
Behind the scenes, Republicans opposed to Romney have long whispered that Bain is the candidate’s glass jaw, that it killed his Senate campaign in 1994, that he’s shown no sign he’s learned to handle the issue on a national stage because it’s not a big factor in the Republican primaries.
“A main argument Romney has made to Republicans has been that they should hold their noses and vote for him because he has the best chance of beating Obama,” one Republican operative at a rival campaign told TPM. “But a lot of Republicans who have thought through how his record at Bain could be used against him, especially in nasty campaign ads in economically depressed parts of swing states, think Bain is a huge liability and that Democrats will bludgeon him with it. Expect to see a lot more scrutiny of Romney’s record in business, and of Bain, in the next month.”
Influential RedState blogger (and Romney detractor) Erick Erickson has brought up the Bain days in exactly that context, warning voters that “if you are foolish, given that the President intends to campaign on a moral case against success and a lot of people are receptive to it, you might want to put up a candidate who made his money doing leveraged buy outs, laying off people, and restructuring companies.”
Erickson is certainly right that Democrats are waiting to pounce on Romney’s business record. Perhaps the biggest sign of how much oomph Democratic strategists ascribe to the Bain Capital angle, is that they’ve barely used it at all. Even while the DNC and Obama campaign frequently bring up Romney’s wealth (see: bet, $10,000), Bain’s layoffs almost never come up. That’s not an oversight: they’re keeping the powder dry for the general.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/republicans-break-silence-on-romneys-bain-capital-days.php?ref=fpa
Obama 2012 Headquarters Upbeat but Phasers Set to Kill.
For all the feel-good vibes and lusciously designed graphics, what the strategists here have built is a giant killing machine. They've had the money—a cool $61 million at last disclosure—and the time to assemble the biggest, baddest campaign infrastructure they could imagine. If you look past the start-up style ping-pong table with the stenciled 2012 logo and tune out the chirpy greetings of volunteers answering phones, you'll notice the team in the darkened southeast corner, the guys with the earlobe plugs and scraggly beards bent over MacBooks. New talent from Silicon Valley, these are the software engineers who are building proprietary data-collection, communications, and reporting systems that could drastically increase the campaign's ability to target swing-voters. And then there's the row of offices that line the eastern wall, secluded chambers where Deputy Campaign Managers Stephanie Cutter, Julianna Smoot, and Jen O'Malley Dillon, spend their days plotting ways to out-fundraise, out-communicate, and out-organize the other guy, whoever he may turn out to be.
Axelrod has just returned from several days of fundraisers and media engagements around the country. ("Left for dead at the checkout counter at Tiffany's" he'd cracked of a newly resurgent Gingrich, trotting out a line he'd been polishing here for days.)
I ask one advisor—who, like nearly everyone, will address strategy only anonymously—the question of the week: Are you doing anything differently to prepare for Gingrich? She laughs. "Depending on which month you'd stopped by, you would've been asking 'Are you ready for Bachmann? Are you ready for Perry?' We're built to win," she says, "irrespective of who the nominee is going to be. We don't get to pick that guy."
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/201112/barack-obama-presidential-campaign-dispatch#ixzz1gN0Th22u
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