Open letter to Senator Tom Coburn

Dear Senator Coburn: I read your report on stimulus waste with great interest. One of the projects that you have wrongfully deemed wasteful sits less than a block from my house, down at the end of my street here in Ypsilanti, MI. The Ypsilanti Freighthouse is a historic building that until just a few years ago operated as a community meeting place and center. For many years, our annual local festival, the Ypsilanti Heritage Festival, held its opening ceremony and dinner at the Freighthouse. Year around, members of my community would hold their wedding ceremonies, receptions and other community events at the Freighthouse. Civic organizations would hold successful fundraisers there. Most Saturday mornings during the summer, a country and rock band made up of local old-timers would perform while members of my community and their children would come and drink coffee or juice and listen to the live music. Our Farmer's Market used to be held there. Every once in a while, the community would come together for a free or inexpensive group Salsa dance lesson or other community, family-friendly event at this locale. Sadly, a few short years ago, some structural defects came to light at our beloved Freighthouse. When these problems were discovered, the building had to be closed to the public for safety reasons. Although the community banded together, formed a non-profit charity and raised thousands of dollars in hopes of bringing the building up to code and opening it, we quickly realized that a quick fix was not to be. The repairs that would be required were far too expensive for a local community non-profit to raise. I write this open letter with the hope that the people who read your report and engage in the kind of fact-checking that you and your staff failed to engage in find this letter on the Internet. In particular, I hope that when they do find this letter, they begin to realize how irresponsible and baseless your report is. Although I cannot speak definitively to the other 99 projects listed in your report, I can testify that your woefully uninformed treatment of Ypsilanti's beloved Freighthouse strongly suggests that the rest of your report isn't worth the paper it is printed on. It's not worth the cost of the bandwidth needed to download it. Instead of taking an opportunity to engage in a meaningful public debate about how stimulus funds are being used and have been used, you instead chose to pull a short quote out of context. Instead of expressing an honest opinion about your differing priorities, you instead chose to neglect your civic duty, and ignore facts that would have been simple to elucidate, had you made nary a modicum of effort to do so. Instead of focusing on uncovering true waste in our government, you chose to openly ridicule a historic community asset that we value, that we have donated our hard earned income to improve, and that so many in my community have generously worked hard toward saving and preserving. You do not seek to inform. You seek to hoodwink and bamboozle. You should be ashamed. Those that elected you, Mr. Coburn, deserve better. Those of us here in Ypsilanti who pay our taxes and love our Freighthouse deserve better. You owe everyone in my community an apology, sir. If you are the "watchdog" you claim to be, and if you take your elected position seriously, you will re-check the basis for every single criticism in your report and issue a correction for every error you find. Moreover, you will remove the Ypsilanti Freighthouse from your list, and you will admit that the project is not the least bit wasteful, but a worthy civic project that stands to benefit my community in ways that you clearly will never understand. Cameron Getto Ypsilanti, MI Image from the Friends of the Freighthouse website. Please visit them and donate.

Gymnastics meet in Ann Arbor

Teilo, Hannah and Esme all got to participate in their end-of-the-year gymnastics meet at the University of Michigan. They all did very well. Here are the respective videos of each of them doing a portion of their floor routines:

Graduation week: Sam and George graduate, Taran moves on to high school

This week has been full of graduations. Sam and George graduated high school and are off to college next year. Taran graduated middle school and is off to Ypsi High next year. Hannah is leaving Chapelle for West Middle School, and Esme and Teilo will remain at Chapelle next year. These kids are all getting so big and grown up! Time really does fly.

Hannah graduated from grade school today

And we are just so proud of her!

Esme catches the biggest fish of the weekend

And she did it on a kid's rod and reel without a steel leader. I think we may have a future champion fisherwoman on our hands!

Why aren't Republicans bothered by their own hypocrisy and double standards?

The debate over the Supreme Court has brought a puzzling attribute of the slowly ebbing Republican party to the forefront. No matter what they're doing, no matter what the issue, Republicans just don't seem to be bothered by their own hypocrisy and double standards. Now, don't get me wrong. I realize that to some extent, we are all hypocrites. We all employ double standards from time to time. Those of us with children know all too well that the things we once thought might be very good ideas we would never let our kids do in a million years. So, I understand. Time goes by. We age, we get more experience, we get wiser, and sometimes we change our minds. And sometimes we eat crow over it. But not Republicans. How long ago was it un-American to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee? Wasn't that just a short 3 to 4 years ago? Don't you remember the rhetoric of the then-majority Republican party? I sure do. "This Senate must do what’s right. We must do what’s fair. We must do the job we were elected to do and took an oath to do. We must give judicial nominees the up-or-down votes they deserve." - Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader (2005). "The Democrats' judicial filibusters are extreme and an arrogation of power. Under the Constitution, the right to nominate judges belongs to the executive, not to the Senate minority leader. Yet the minority leadership has claimed a right to 'veto' by filibuster any nominee who deviates from the minority's extreme, ideological litmus tests. The president can submit any nomination he likes, but he knows that even if a clear majority supports his nomination, the Democrats will 'filibuster-veto' it. Further, the "advise and consent" function is in serious jeopardy if this new tactic of filibustering judges continues. The Democrats have made it all too clear that they are willing to let the Constitution's separation of powers fall by the wayside if that is what it takes to push through their agenda." - Rick Santorum, Republican Senator (April 17, 2005). "Fundamentally, what we have is a partisan minority blocking a bipartisan majority from being able to act on the Senate floor. And this is something that we think needs to come to an end." - John Cornyn, Republican Senator (May 13, 2005). "The President believes that the fix is for the Senate to exercise its constitutional responsibility and ensure that every judicial nominee receives an up-or-down Senate vote within a reasonable time after nomination, no matter who is President or which party controls the Senate." - Roberto Gonzales, Counsel to President George W. Bush (May 6, 2003) (prior to his appointment as Attorney General of the United States of America). During the six months or so prior to and encompassing the nomination and confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States, one phrase was on every Republican senatorial lip. 'All of the President’s nominees, both now and in the future, deserve a fair up-or-down vote,' said Sam Brownback, of Kansas. 'Every nominee, no matter if the President is Democrat or Republican, deserves an up-or-down vote,' said Jim DeMint, of South Carolina. 'We must take action to insure President Bush’s nominees are getting the up-or-down vote they deserve,' said Kay Bailey Hutchison, of Texas. 'Since the day I came to the U.S. Senate,' said Pete Domenici, of New Mexico, 'I have believed strongly that every nominee deserves an up-or-down vote.' The conservative commentariat was equally of one mind about the sanctity of verticality. 'The American people,' wrote John Podhoretz, in the Post, 'won’t understand why a candidate should be denied an up-or-down vote.' The White House, naturally, agreed. 'We believe that every judicial nominee deserves an up-or-down vote,' said Karl Rove. Boing, boing. It was like watching a trampoline exhibition. - Excerpted from The New Yorker, November 14, 2005. Media Matters has set up a page with all the relevant quotes from all the now irrelevant Republicans. It's worth a look-see, if for nothing else but a laugh. With no apparent understanding whatsoever of the party's long standing official position on this issue, Republican Senators John Kyl and Ben Nelson, just the day before Sonia Sotamayor's nomination, on May 25, 2009, both publicly stated that they will pursue filibusters to hold up confirmation of any nominee they don't like. It will be quite interesting, and possibly kind of fun, to watch these hypocrites weasel themselves an excuse, however lame it may be, for this particular double standard. Graphic taken from the Huffington Post.

Free ice cream for the kids at the end of Ypsi's Memorial Day Parade

Word on the street is that there will be free ice cream for the kiddies at the end of tomorrow's Memorial Day Parade. After yesterday's highly successful Memorial Holiday Concert, the parade will be a perfect way to finish out this holiday weekend!

YSO Memorial Holiday Weekend Concert this Saturday

The Ypsilanti Symphony Orchestra will hold its 2nd Annual Memorial Holiday Concert in Riverside Park on Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 2:00 P.M. The concert will feature patriotic favorites and was a real crowd pleaser last year. Please join us for what is sure to be a great deal of fun! Bring a lawn chair and your family and friends. In case of rain, the concert will take place the following day, Sunday, same place, same time.

Perspective

The scene is last evening, on Monday, May 18, at about 7:45 P.M., just a few minutes after the Human Relations Commission opened its first hearing into the use of the name "Ypsitucky Bluegrass Festival." Only I'm not at the meeting. In fact, I'm not even in Ypsilanti. I'm in Northville at a social function that has been planned for some time. Crazy Dave is there, and he narrates the following story: I had just spent my first summer in Michigan working for a large law firm. I was working with my uncle Don, who is a great guy. The firm I was with was fantastic. I had met a wonderful woman who I was dating (who we all know now he married). I got back to New York and was hanging out with some of my buddies. I told them all about how I was living in Berkley and hanging out in Royal Oak, which was trendy at the time. I told them about this great firm I was working for, and how I wanted to join the firm after graduation. One of the firm's clients was a city called Taylor, which some people curiously referred to at Taylor-tucky. My buddies started laughing uncontrollably, practically falling on the floor laughing. My buddy turns to me and says, "You mean, like, there's a difference between Michigan and Kentucky?"

If Texas were to actually secede . . .

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy