Epilogue:

Senator Barak Obama will be inaugurated as the President of the United States of America.

Circuit Court Judge Diane Hathaway won the Michigan Supreme Court seat held by Chief Justice Clifford W. Taylor.

 

Election 2008

Obama -- 2008
Send a message to Washington D.C. that's time for a change . . .

I listened to Senator Obama speak at a senate hearing maybe a year ago. He struck me as a thoughtful and intelligent man. I don't recall the exact matter but it involved the national security situation.

Personally. I don't hold it against Senator Obama his racial or ethnic background. It is how he was born and he was offered no choice in it, just as you and I. However, I know how people treat other people not like them -- they associate others with them based on their own experiences and what they were told by others.

I see Senator Obama as representing a much needed change of direction. With Senator McCain I see a future of basically more of the same.

..."That gap resembles the top-to-bottom income distribution just before the Great Depression, according to the Washington Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Then as now, the top 1 percent of households accounted for around one fifth of the national income. In 1980, their share was 8 percent." ... Karl Marx and the world financial crisis

On election day, November 4, 2008 you will have a choice, more of the same or a new direction. Ask yourself are you better off economically? What is your nation's standing in world opinion? And most important of all -- who's telling it the way it is and has a vision for a better future for the shrinking middle class?

Vote for a change -- Barak Obama 2008

 

 

Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice

The Michigan Constitution empowers the voters of the state to elect Justices of the Supreme Court and lower courts. It avoids nominations by the Governor and ratification by the legislature as is in the U.S. Federal system. While it deters the shaping of the courts to the current administration's political ideology, most voters have no intimate knowledge of the courts to base their decisions upon and perhaps rely on political advertisements or make their choices blindly.

The Michigan Supreme Court plays an important role in setting the climate for both the citizens of the state of Michigan and private enterprise doing business in Michigan. Recent decisions by the courts and their decisions' appeal from the lower courts to the Michigan Supreme Court makes the electorate's choice of the seats of the Michigan Supreme Court and its Chief Justice an important one.

When it comes to issues of standing, who may bring claim before the Michigan Supreme Court and its determination of state government's responsibility and private entity's liability I think the is a lot of room for improvement in equity.

... "Chief Justice Clifford W. Taylor, a native of Flint, was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court in August 1997 by Governor John Engler to fill the seat vacated by retiring Justice Dorothy Comstock Riley. In 1998, Justice Taylor ran and was elected to fill the balance of Justice Riley’s term. Justice Taylor was re-elected to a full eight-year term in 2000. In January 2005, and again in 2007, he was elected by his colleagues to serve as Chief Justice of the Court." ... Official Michigan Supreme Court biography

Chief Justice Clifford W. Taylor, is qualified to serve as Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court but the Court's rulings under his leadership of the court I don't think have advanced either the state's business climate , the rights of the taxpayers or the electorate at large.

Michigan needs to be a leading state in the union -- conserving what we have at the expense of advancement through the judiciary does not make us a leader in equitable law and does not make Michigan a better place for its citizens.

 

Michigan Supreme Court
LEE, et al. v. Macomb County Board of Commissioners, et al.
No. 114700

Before the Entire Bench
TAYLOR, J.

...[F]acts and Proceedings

Here, without ever having sought relief under the act, plaintiffs filed suit to compel Macomb and Wayne Counties to levy the annual tax in order to create the fund of which the act speaks. Further, they, and presumably others, will soon seek damages for those years in which the counties allegedly failed to comply with the act. ...

... [W]ayne County, in the Walker case, sought summary disposition on similar grounds. It provided documentary evidence indicating that, in 1994, the Wayne County Commission approved an appropriation of $1,146,042 for Veterans' Affairs expenditures and that the Wayne County Soldiers Relief Program had been operational since February 1995. In this case, however, the trial court denied Wayne County's motion for summary disposition, concluding that plaintiffs had standing because they were in the class intended to be benefited [s.i.c.]** by the act and had been harmed by noncompliance with it and that they were not required to exhaust administrative remedies to challenge a wholesale failure to comply with the act. ...

What's more disturbing is that (from the footnotes);

...[T]he Court of Appeals ruled that government immunity precluded plaintiffs' negligence and gross negligence claims in both cases. ...

"Government immunity?"

While, I don't disagree with the legal concept of "government immunity" it should be limited to consequence of unforeseen results of its actions. I don't think that anyone who pays taxes to local or state government expects units of government not to be held accountable to performing upon acts passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the Governor of the state of Michigan, where the constitutionality of such act is not of instant question.

While, the legal decision is justified in the broadest reading of the law by the courts -- at times the intent of the law must also be considered.

And in referring to the Court of Appeals in the Michigan Supreme Court opinion Justice Clifford W. Taylor authored;

...[T]he panel held that mandamus was an appropriate remedy here because plaintiffs were seeking compliance with the act, not the levy of a particular amount or the grant of particular benefits. ... Id. at 333-334.

He goes on to quote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia on standing to bring claim, again the narrowest interpretation. Well, the majority of the time I respectfully do not agree with Justice Scalia's opinions in either dissent or in concordance. It is not that they are not well founded in law or precedent, its that they often are in conflict with principle and intent.

The office of Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court is entrusted to the voters of the state of Michigan and I think that at often times the voters are influenced by political ads and name recognition. So, I ask, how well has the citizenry been served by the incumbent?

I'm not going to tell you who to vote for but I know who I will be voting against...