Arbor Update

Ann Arbor Area Community News

Parking fines increase

Posted by dilleym on 23. June 2004

Local weblogger Murph has an interesting post on the City of Ann Arbor parking fines.

“As a follow-up to my city council watch post, the council voted to increase almost all parking ticket prices at last night’s (6/21/04) meeting. The only ticket not increased is the $5 fine for an expired meter paid within the next business day.”

Continuing Coverage of the Buildup to the RNC

Posted by Ari Paul on 23. June 2004

Elliott Mallen, the Michigan Daily’s dissident columnist, urges people feed up with the Bush-Cheney junta to use their protest the Republican National Convention in New York City this summer. Could Mallen forsee another Chicago 1968?

“I am not going to New York to protest our country’s millions of Republican voters. The impoverished farmer in Idaho didn’t lie about pre-war intelligence. The 85-year-old Florida retiree didn’t torture detainees in Iraq. I’m not protesting my Republican father (whose vote is always cancelled out by my Democrat mother). I am driving to New York a week before class starts to protest the Bush administration. Despite what many people will tell you, not all Republicans are evil people. I would not have protested the 1996 convention that nominated Bob Dole or Bush Sr.ís 1992 re-nomination. I am protesting only a handful of people: George W. Bush and his neoconservative inner circle.”

New York City, as is its tradition, is doing its best to silence any public opposition to the American war machine.

“The city of New York is doing everything in its power to prevent significant protest. The Police and Parks Departments have denied an application for a 250,000-person march by Madison Square Garden and then on to the Great Lawn in Central Park. The reason for the denial is that if it rains before the march, having people walk on the grass will damage it, meaning it might have to be re-sodded. I wasn’t aware that our First Amendment rights could be thrown out in order to prevent grass in a public park from being trod upon.”

Election Night Drink Specials.com

Posted by Brian Kerr on 23. June 2004

Arbor Blogger extraordinaire George Hotelling has launched a new website, called Election Night Drink Specials.com. The idea behind the eponymous specials is that you walk into a bar on November 2 with your ‘I Voted!’ sticker and get some sort of drinky discount, a sot’s special, a beverage bargain, a… you get the idea.

See details of the launch at George’s blog. He says:

I’m hoping to get more young people (especially college students) to vote because their bars are encouraging them to. So I’m encouraging bars to encourage people to vote by giving them free advertising.

There’s only one hitch—I haven’t been able to actually get any bars to sign up.

George is looking for barfolk, or friends of barfolk, and so forth, who might be coerced into running and listing drink specials. Perhaps you can help? If so, get in touch with him.

So close, yet so far away...

Posted by on 23. June 2004

from Drug War Rant

“Macomb County’s “newest” weapon against crime is 44 years old, weighs a beefy 10 tons, travels only 3 miles on a gallon of gas, sits 10 people uncomfortably and can flatten a house.

And it’s a war veteran.

The Sheriff’s Department on Monday took delivery of an M113 armored personnel carrier, compliments of the U.S. Army.”

Comment [3]

Moore Getting Mixed Reviews from 'Liberal Media'

Posted by Ari Paul on 23. June 2004

Here is what some of the critics are saying about Fahrenheit 9/11, the new movie from Michigan native Michael Moore.

Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate.com:

“To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.”

The New York Times weighs in:

“Mostly, though, he sifts through the public record, constructing a chronicle of misrule that stretches from the Florida recount to the events of this spring. His case is synthetic rather than comprehensive, and it is not always internally consistent. He dwells on the connections between the Bush family and the Saudi Arabian elite (including the bin Laden family), and while he creates a strong impression of unseemly coziness, his larger point is not altogether clear.”

The Nation, always supportive, says:

“Moore alleges no conspiracies. He merely says that Bush has motives beyond those he’s willing to state. To make this case, Moore begins by showing that the Bush family in general, and George W. in particular, have received lavish support over the years from the Saudi elite, including the bin Ladens, and have offered valuable help in turn. Unlike the actualities footage that Moore uses in the film, these facts are by now widely known—although it was news to me that Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, had dined with Bush at the White House on September 13, 2001. In speculating about this dinner, and about the subsequent airlifting out of the United States of more than a hundred Saudis when everyone else was grounded, Moore goes only so far as to say that the overwhelmingly Saudi makeup of the September 11 attack teams could have proved embarrassing to Bush. He would not have wanted journalists just then to begin looking into his personal ties to Saudi interests, or to ask whether any useful information had emerged from the two dozen bin Ladens who had been in the country, and whom he soon spirited away without the indignity of questioning.”

The Village Voice opines:

“If Moore is formidable, it’s not because he is a great filmmaker (far from it), but because he infuses his sense of ridicule with the fury of moral indignation. Fahrenheit 9/11 is strongest when that wrath is vented on Bush and his cohorts. Let us not forget that Dana Carvey did more than anyone in America, save Ross Perot, to drive Bush père from the White House. There are sequences in Fahrenheit 9/11 so devastatingly on target as to inspire the thought that Moore might similarly help evict the son. ”

Fahrenheit 9/11 will open at the Michigan Theater on Thursday at Midnight.

Comment [7]

Ginsberg Center: Help Wanted

Posted by Ari Paul on 23. June 2004

Idealist.org:

“The Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning at the University of Michigan seeks a staff member to be the Program Director of SERVE. This is a student-run unit at the University of Michigan that works to provide students with opportunities to address serious social issues through community service and social action.”

'Control Room' playing through June 28

Posted by Brian Kerr on 23. June 2004

Given this site’s deserved hoopla over erstwhile Flint resident Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11—which we will all see anyways—I wanted to take a moment to mention another interesting documentary.

Control Room—a documentary peek inside the Al Jazeera newsroom and beyond—is showing at the Michigan Theater through June 28. The film was directed by Jehane Noujaim, who brought us the overrated Startup.com. See also the movie’s official website, or the Michigan Theater’s showtimes.

Huge developments proposed

Posted by Scott Trudeau on 23. June 2004

Crosswinds is proposing a huge development just south of Milan. The plan could bring as many as 9,000 residences and 30,000 new residents (more than 6 times the population of Milan, a quarter the population of Ann Arbor)—and would also include commercial and industrial properties. The 4000 acre site is a 30 minute drive south of Ann Arbor and well outside of the proposed ‘’greenbelt area.’‘ From the Ann Arbor News:

> 9,000 homes possible Development near Milan may bring 30,000 residents
> Proposed 9,000-home development draws questions

And a proposal one tenth of this size is proposed near Dexter village:

> Developer proposes 800-home project near Dexter village

Comment [2]

News: Race-based scholarships reviewed, parking fines, house fire update

Posted by Scott Trudeau on 23. June 2004

Recent articles from the Ann Arbor news:

Race-based scholarships at U of M are under review in light of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision:

The City Council voted to raise some parking fees (though the 24-hour $5 expired meter ticket doesn’t change):

While no cause has been uncovered, the Steven’s Co-op fire is called “suspicious”:

Slow Down! "Traffic calming" doesn't work?

Posted by Scott Trudeau on 23. June 2004

Traffic calming has been a recurring issue in Ann Arbor politics. Expanding traffic calming efforts city-wide was an issue in the 2002 city council race—the city now has a petition form you can download to request the City pursue traffic calming options on your street. More recently, one of the many benefits of installing bike lanes, touted by biking advocates is their traffic calming effect (AA News article).

Is it all for naught? This Salon.com article (paid registration or ad view req’d) suggests everything we know about traffic calming is wrong.

> via BoingBoing.net

Rejecting the idea of separating people from vehicular traffic, [second generation “traffic calming” is] a concept that privileges multiplicity over homogeneity, disorder over order, and intrigue over certainty. In practice, it’s about dismantling barriers: between the road and the sidewalk, between cars, pedestrians and cyclists and, most controversially, between moving vehicles and children at play.

For the past 50 years, the American approach to traffic safety has been dominated by the “triple E” paradigm: engineering, enforcement and education. And yet, the idea of the street as a flexible community space is a provocative one in the United States, precisely because other “traditional” modes of transportation—light rail, streetcars and bicycles—are making a comeback in cities across the country. The shared-street concept is also intriguing for the way it challenges one of the fundamental tenets of American urban planning: that to create safe communities, you have to control them.

Comment [2]

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