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WHAT’S INSIDE Please Mr. President (Page A-3) According to Jesse Jackson, President Barack Obama should make a point of going to Ferguson, Missouri, to get a better understanding of the situation and help cool the atmosphere. “Ferguson is too important to be treated on the margins,” said Jackson.
Credit scores used wrongfully (Page B-4) Congressman John Conyers, Jr. explains how many people are hurt when potential employers make a decision based on a person’s credit score. “Credit checks were not designed to measure a person’s character, ability or suitability for employment,” he said.
December 10-16, 2014
michiganchronicle.com
Volume 78 – Number 13
Can Duggan reform insurance in 2015?
By Bankole Thompson
down rates in Detroit will bring a huge sigh of relief for residents even though such action will be met with stiff challenges and opposition should Duggan aggressively push for it in 2015.
CHRONICLE SENIOR EDITOR
Last month, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan applauded the Detroit City Council for approving in an 8-0 vote a key contract that officials say will move the city one step closer to possibly creating a city-sponsored auto insurance company. The legislative body approved the deal to award $75,000 to Pinnacle Actuarial Resources to study “the feasibility of creating a city-sponsored insurance company.” Duggan’s office said the study will provide the administration with information in determining the next steps necessary to bring down auto insurance rates for Detroiters. The high cost of insurance was a top issue in the
Mike Duggan 2013 mayoral campaign during which Duggan vowed to create a D-Insurance to address what some residents call “ridiculous” high insurance rates in the city. Adopting measures to bring
If the mayor decides to make auto insurance one of his biggest priorities next year, he will be waging a battle with the Insurance Institute of Michigan, the most influential public affairs voice of insurance companies in the state. The oranization has long maintained that there is no such thing as insurance redlining in Detroit. In 2014, the group took issue with a front page article in the Michigan Chronicle, “Mr. Mayor, Stand Your Ground on Redlining,” regarding Detroit Mayor
Mike Duggan’s call for insurance reform in his first State of the City Address. “It is not justified. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect driving record and never been in an accident. Most Detroiters are paying more a month for car insurance than the car payment itself,” Duggan said bluntly in his speech. In a protest letter sent to the Chronicle, Pete Kuhnmuench, executive director of the Insurance Institute of Michigan, said, “When ‘redlining’ is used to mean discrimination based on race, this is illegal and is condemned by the insurance industry. However, many times the term ‘redlining’ is used in-
See DUGGAN page A-4
GOP launches preemptive strike against Detroit ordinance By Bankole Thompson CHRONICLE SENIOR EDITOR
While Michigan lawmakers are seemingly reluctant and at times scrambling to find ways to fund broken roads, the lame duck session appears to have an appetite for an issue that resonates in the Detroit business community as well as in the neighborhoods. The lame duck session is taking a swipe at a proposed ordinance, the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), which has been the focus of recent heated debates on the Detroit City Council ensuring that businesses getting tax abatements from the city identify ways in which the community can benefit from business deals including hiring practices.
Health care fact finding (Page C-1) Linda Alexander, chief clinical officer of Total Health Care, recently traveled to Madrid, largely to gain an understanding of why that city, the largest in Spain, has such a successful health care system, of which the people are “engaged, well informed and proud.”
The first Black superstar (Page D-1) The legendary Josephine Baker did not invent glamour, but she took it to new levels. Starting out long before the development of the Civil Rights Movement, when racism was blatant and never apologized for, Baker moved to France from which she emerged as a superstar and a worldwide sensation.
Eric Holder – Andre Smith photo
Holder’s Nation of Equals Police reform, voting rights key to legacy of first Black attorney general
By Bankole Thompson CHRONICLE SENIOR EDITOR
After his departure, America will perhaps not have another attorney general like Eric Holder in a long time. Maybe the standard he set at the Justice Department will inspire or force succeeding presidents after Barack Obama to choose an AG who is rooted both in the notion and the history that has informed this nation’s continued fight for equal Bankole Thompson justice under the law. Very few leaders across this land have been as consequential with all deliberate speed as Holder. I can’t think of that many leaders in our government and in this dispensation, like Holder who has been so forceful with professional integrity, honest with nobility and willing to tackle the daring question of race and justice head-on in a way no other preeminent law enforcement official or political leader has done in recent history. Holder has used his powerful office as a platform to educate those who are reluctant to accept the fundamental truth that we are a nation still in transition seeking to make whole wounds from a sordid past. Wounds that have created two Americas. Wounds that open up whenever a Ferguson takes place. And in doing so he has faced his critics, incensed by his audacity to abandon political expediency in interpreting the law, and instead stand on the letter of the law. Even as some of his critics, whether in orchestrated public relations driven congressional hearings or in right wing attacks and smear campaigns, think to themselves “crucify him, crucify him!” and venomously attack his credibility, Holder, has not relented as the first African American enforcer of the law.
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How ironic that the man the right wing and some congressional leaders would want to crucify after repeated failed attempts to smear his character, Holder is made to bear his own cross as attorney general. To be precise, he has more
painfully borne the cross of standing for equality as attorney general than any other we know of in history. But to understand Holder is to know his roots in the struggle for human and civil rights and his penchant for affirming the dignity of Black students by leading sit-ins at Columbia Law School in the 1970s “It is an honor to be back at Columbia Law School, although it’s something of a miracle that I ever got into this esteemed school in the first place. During my undergraduate years here in Morningside Heights, I was one of many students on this campus who felt strongly about, well, nearly everything. It was the ’70s. During my senior year, several of us took one of our concerns — that Black students needed a designated space to gather on campus — to the dean’s office. This being Columbia, we proceeded to occupy that office,” Holder said in his 2010 commencement address at Columbia Law School. Since his appointment in 2009, Holder has been firm in upholding the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. We became more aware of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division under Holder than any of his predecessors in recent memory. Unlike other federal bureaucratic agencies, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ did not get lost in bureacracy. Instead, it was crisscrossing the nation targeting violators of voting rights. Under Holder we saw the Civil Rights Division become a crusader for justice with officials demonstrating publicly their concern for voting rights violations and working to address it. “In the last eight years, vital federal laws designed to protect rights in the workplace, the housing market and the voting booth have languished. Improper political hiring has undermined this important mission. That must change. And I intend to make this a priority as attorney general,” Holder said at his confirmation hearing.
See HOLDER page A-4
The Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) warned against a CBA, indicating that it would drive business away instead of making the city inviting to an investment group. On the other hand, advocates of a CBA believe to the contrary, noting that the city has a history of business deals that have failed neighborhoods and in some instances scanty jobs were provided after the deals were pushed through. Now, Republican Earl Poleski, state representative from Jackson, has introduced HR 5977, David Nathan which passed in the House Competitiveness Committee in an 8-7 vote to basically stop any city from adopting a community benefits agreement. It is without doubt that the legislation introduced as a bill “to limit the powers of units of local government to adopt, enforce, or adRashida Tlaib minister certain local mandates for employers; to prohibit local minimum wage, benefit, or leave requirements; to prohibit certain ordinances regulating the development of real property within units of local government; and to void local requirements that are Earl Poleski adopted in violation of this act,” was inspired by the ongoing fight at city council over the CBA. It has supporters of a benefits ordinance riled up over the issue. “I am convinced that my colleagues in Lansing are being used and worse, being lied to by a group that is manipulating them on behalf of very controlling and greedy people. House Bill 5799 is setting a dangerous precedent that allows special interest groups, like Detroit Regional Chamber, to run to Lansing to stop actions being taken by city councils across the state that may not always agree with their position on various issues,” said outgoing State Rep. Rashida Tlaib. “Lansing’s meddling is going to take us through the same path that led Detroit to bankruptcy and population decline. Lansing will never see that they played a significant role in the challenges our city faces today. They paralyzed us back then and ae trying to do it again. But I guess it’s easier to blame the mayor in jail.” The Detroit Regional Chamber has not gone public in supporting the legislation and communication director Jim Martinez had not returned a request at press time. However, Tlaib said Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones have been working on
See ORDINANCE page A-4