After a ton of comments and emails back and forth with various sources, we have a clearer picture on what the rules are and how we might expect them to be interpreted.

Rule 38 and the Unit Rule

First there is the infamous Rule 38 of the Rules of the Republican Party which states, “No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule.” So this sounds like delegates can not be bound to vote for a particular candidate, right? Well, first let’s look at what the unit rule is.

The unit rule prohibits states from forcing all delegates to vote as a unit. In other words, a state can not bind all delegates together and force them to vote a certain way. However, states get around this rule by having one or more at-large delegates which are not bound and free to vote however they want.

So…Are Bound Delegates Really Bound?

So what about the regular delegates – the ones not so lucky to be a token unbound delegate? Surprisingly, we were unable to find anything that indicates that any of the delegates can actually be bound at the national convention. Initially we had heard reports that delegates could simply abstain during the first round of voting, but it appears they may not even have to do that.

Mitt Romney had this very issue come up in 2008 while running against John McCain in Utah. Mitt Romney won almost 90% of the votes in the primary, but the Utah Republican Party voted in a standing rule that effectively bound all of those delegates to vote for John McCain at the national convention, since Romney had dropped out of the race.

However, one of those delegates refused to vote for McCain and that prompted a letter from Jennifer Sheehan who is legal counsel for the Republican National Committee to Utah National Committeewoman Nancy Lord. In it, Sheehan said “The RNC does not recognize a states’ binding of national delegates, but considers each delegate a free agent who can vote for whoever they choose.” She continued, “The national convention allows delegates to vote for the individual of their choice, regardless of whether the persons name is officially placed into nomination or not.”

What Does the Law Say?

Another fascinating tidbit is the fact that there are no laws that cover this. Election laws do not apply because the delegate process is handled by the Democratic and Republican national organizations. So don’t expect the courts to get involved, but do expect to see all sorts of shenanigans pulled at the Republican national convention. If Mitt Romney doesn’t have 1,144 actual delegates secured, and its increasingly beginning to look like he may not, then not only is the door opened for Ron Paul, but it’s essentially opened for anyone else as well. That could include candidates that have dropped out, or other power brokers in the Republican Party that never entered the race.

Our state convention will be held this Friday and Saturday, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the delegates actually fall, but its unlikely that Romney will get a majority of them despite winning the state primary in February. If all of this seems different than how you thought our political process worked, you’re not alone. And to complicate matters more, when it comes to collecting delegates, Ron Paul just keeps on winning…

Maureen Taylor of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) is telling welfare recipients to move into foreclosed homes, without permission. It may seem like a nice thing to do – you have people that need a home and you have homes that need people, what’s the problem? There are several problems, primarily being that it is illegal. As if being broke wasn’t bad enough, she is giving advice that may land these people in court.

That doesn’t seem to matter to the MWRO. “You can’t imagine,” Taylor said, “when we get to work at 9 and 10 in the morning, there are 20 to 30 people in the hallway talking about ‘I don’t have any more money, my rent is due’ — three or four months behind — what can I do? And, it’s unreal, because we don’t have answers except to say, ‘here’s a list of houses that we have intercepted that have been repossessed by banks, pick one and move in.’”

There is a key distinction to understand here – these aren’t homeless people that just need a roof over their heads. The MWRO handles people that are on government assistance and have a residence. Most qualify for Section 8 housing subsidies which makes their rent and utility payments next to nothing. In other words, even though they are poor they are getting enough money and subsidies from the government to keep a roof over their heads.

The problem is when you offer people something for free, they will take it. They have very little incentive to make things work by budgeting and being responsible with the assistance they receive since they can get houses for free from the list of foreclosed homes. There is no incentive to maintain the houses since they don’t own them and don’t have a landlord to answer to. They know they’ll be forced to leave in 6 months to a year so the houses are treated as disposable.

This also creates divisiveness in the community, where many people either own their homes or pay considerable rent for them. It is unfair to them that people can get the same thing for free. Why should they work as hard as they do and pay their bills if they can get the same thing for free? This is why communism has failed time and time again.

The company paid just under $2 million dollars for 200 acres in Milan last year. The 415 unit housing complex they are building will not be marketed to the public, but rather to Chinese citizens. They also have plans for a Chinese cultural center to be built in what some people are referring to “China City”.

Since the owners of Sino-Michigan Properties LLC are not residents of Michigan they are required to have a registered agent located in the state. Their registered agent is Arthur Dudley II, of the Detroit based legal firm Butzel Long. He has declined to comment on the development plans.

Sino-Michigan Properties LLC appears to be setting up shop in Michigan to avoid the costly transportation issues related to manufacturing goods in China to be shipped to the US. This presence in Michigan is expected to alleviate that to some degree.

This is not the first foothold that Chinese business has gained in the US. They have bought a financial interest in 600,000 acres of natural gas and oil fields in Texas, they are exploring a 30,000 acre industrial zone in Boise Idaho, they have started the process of putting a power plant in Toledo Ohio on land they own, and the list goes on.

The Chinese have been buying real estate in the US for awhile now, but this move into infrastructural areas such as power plants, manufacturing facilities, oil and gas fields etc., are concerning to many residents. The long term implications are unclear, but we do know that we’re moving into uncharted territory by allowing an enemy country to gain such a significant foothold within our borders.

To better understand their long term strategy here, it might be worth looking at the Chinese game of Go (click here for the Wikipedia article on Go). Go, or weiqi as it is known in China is a game of strategy, in the way that many westerners consider chess to be a game of strategy. The goals are very different though.

In chess, the goal is to attack and capture pieces with the goal of forcing the king to surrender. However, the goal of weiqi is simply to control territory, thereby controlling your opponent. You do not need to waste resources trying to capture your opponent, because if you control their territory, you control your opponent anyway.

The real world advantage of adopting an eastern weiqi strategy versus a western chess strategy is that you are able to exert more control while expending fewer resources. You can simply look to US efforts to exert influence in the Middle East as an example of this. Now ask yourself how many resources China is wasting with their approach?

Before you dismiss the analogy of a game to the recent territorial grabs by China here in the US, understand that the game of weiqi has been used for over 2,000 years to train diplomats and business men in China in matters of strategy. Sun Tzu’s Art of War is founded on weiqi principals, and it shapes everything they do  in business and politics. The territorial grab we’re seeing now is all just part of the game.

The Brookings Institute released a new report that shows Metro Detroit gained the 2nd most manufacturing jobs since 2010. With new developments in the region like TechShop Detroit, the hope is that the are will be able to build off of this success and branch out into other fields of manufacturing that are less reliant on automotive, better insulating the area from the huge unemployment swings we’ve been accustomed to.

One particular thing of a note form the study that may surprise many is that manufacturing plays a larger role now, than many might have thought. According to the study, “more metropolitan areas depend on manufacturing as a part of their economic base today than three decades ago.”

Some of the recent change is the result of manufacturing costs in the area being lower than they used to be. Additionally, it is becoming more expensive to manufacture overseas, particularly with the increase in shipping costs and rising labor rates in countries like China.

The study shows that Metro Detroit had a gain of 12% in manufacturing jobs since 2010. That’s great news, but Michigan lost 423,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000-2010, so although the 12% is nice, it’s not time to relax by any means. The study shows a shift in manufacturing out of the southern area of the country, and back to the Midwest.

Manufacturing jobs in Metro Detroit numbered 187,821, which represents roughly 10% of the total jobs in the area. Surprisingly, that only places Metro Detroit in sixth for sheer number of actual manufacturing jobs in the country, although the study did not indicate whether any other areas had as a large of a percentage of their jobs reliant on manufacturing.

Southeastern Michigan needs to continue its diversification away from manufacturing jobs if we don’t want to see the massive employment issues we’ve had over the last decade return. It doesn’t mean we have to turn away from manufacturing, it just means we need to take advantage of the situation to branch into other industries while things are good.

These results might not mean what you think.

After the Republican Party County Conventions held here last week, something has started to become increasingly clear – Mitt Romney does not have the Republican nomination for President secured. This may come as a surprise to many, but the primary voting on February 28th was essentially a beauty contest. Mitt Romney won 41.1% of the vote and Ron Paul won 11.6% of the vote, but the delegates are the ones that actually pick the candidate and the delegates will not be determined until the state convention on May 18th-19th.

Here’s how it works – first there is a primary where the voting is open to the public. This is what happened on February 28th and this was what received all of the media attention. It didn’t take long for various media outlets to project Mitt Romney as the winner, and by the next day we got the projections that Romney had been awarded 16 delegates, Santorum received 14, and Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich received none. This is where the confusion comes in.

The media projects delegates based on vote totals from the primary, but that is incorrect and inaccurate. Delegates are actually selected at county conventions which were held statewide on May 3rd. Then, a number of those delegates are selected to go on to the state convention which is May 18th-19th, and then from that pool of delegates, 30 are selected to go to the national convention where they will cast their vote for the nominee.

Almost one million people cast a vote in February for the Republican candidate of their choice, but only 30 people actually get to vote at the Republican national convention in August, and those 30 votes are the only votes that count. Those 30 people are the ones that Ron Paul has been targeting this whole time – not the one million people in the primary whose votes don’t actually count. This was the strategy used by Warren Harding and it got him elected President despite being relatively unpopular in the general voting. Now you see why Mitt Romney is getting nervous and the Republican Party is trying everything they can to ignore Ron Paul.

It’s unlikely that Ron Paul will get a majority of the 30 delegates from Michigan, and because of state party rules certain numbers of delegates are bound to vote for Mitt Romney in the first round of voting at the national convention. So the strategy that Ron Paul has been following is to get as many of his supporters on the slate of delegates even if they are bound by state party rules to vote for Romney. It remains to be seen how many Michigan delegates support Ron Paul, all we know for sure is that the official numbers are completely inaccurate.

Since a candidate needs 1,144 delegates to win the nomination at the national convention, any Ron Paul supporters that are bound to Mitt Romney can simply abstain from voting, thereby denying Romney enough delegates in the first round of voting. Then a second round of voting is required and all bound delegates are thereby released and allowed to vote for anybody they want. At that time, Ron Paul supporters will be free to vote for Ron Paul thereby guaranteeing that the Romney delegate total will decrease significantly in additional rounds of voting.

Delegates can even vote for other candidates that have suspended their campaigns (in case you were wondering why candidates “suspend” their campaign rather than “end” it – that’s why). This would be a disaster for Romney and at that point nobody knows what will happen. Nobody can deny that Romney appears to have very little support in the Republican Party and a brokered convention would probably destroy his chances of winning the nomination. After all, if he were going to be the candidate, it wouldn’t make it to a brokered convention in the first place.

Making matters worse, with Ron Paul still in the race the Republican National Committee is required not to show favoritism to any candidate. According to rule #11 found here, the party is not allowed to contribute money or any aid at all to one candidate over another. This rule seems to have been violated by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on April 25th when he released the following statement indicating that the national party was lining up behind Romney, despite Ron Paul still being in the race:

“Governor Romney’s strong performance and delegate count at this stage of the primary process has made him our party’s presumptive nominee,” Mr. Priebus said. “In order to maximize our efforts I have directed my staff at the R.N.C. to open lines of communication with the Romney campaign.”

“It’s my intention to have a seamless and complete merger between the presumptive nominee and the Republican National Committee,” Mr. Priebus said. “That means political, communications, fund-raising, research and the chairman’s office, along with the governor’s main operational team, are completely merged.”

According to Republican Party rules, Ron Paul is entitled to those same fundraising efforts, and if we know anything about Ron Paul supporters they are going to hold the party to those rules. And Mr. Priebus better be careful or he may end up being replaced by a Ron Paul supporter too.

Obamney 2012 - The choice is yours.

Update 5/10/2012 – Someone just sent me this banner that sums up the 2012 presidential race perfectly and explains why Ron Paul supporters are as vocal as they are, and why it is unlikely that they will ever really get behind Romney. If too many people feel there is no real difference between the two candidates, the choice then becomes do you want to accept it for 4 more years, or for 8 more years.

Update 5/14/2012 – We’ve got a new article with recent information and clarifications of Rule 38 and the unit rule, as well as how this affects Michigan. Read it here: http://www.michiganstandard.com/261/ron-paul-delegate-strategy-to-win-republican-nomination-paying-off/

Michigan actually won the Upper Peninsula, by losing Toledo in the Toledo War in 1836, and secession has come up several time since then. The most recent serious attempt was in 1970 when the measure only lost by one vote. However, even if the initiative were to make it to a vote and win approval by Michigan’s legislature, they would still have to get Congressional approval to become the 51st state.

Representation

The issue stems from the feeling of many in the U.P. that Lansing doesn’t represent their interest and that the rest of the state benefits from the relationship, more than they do. Only 3% of the population in the state reside in the U.P., but they have 30% of the land and a ton of mining and lumber resources that benefit the state as a whole. These resources are key to the resentment – with only 3% of the population they get very little say in state issues, but with all of those resources they feel like they should have more influence.

The most recent issue revolves around a mining tax that Lansing wants to modify in a way that many feel would shift the tax revenue from local governments in the U.P. to Lansing.

“I feel that they’re attempting to use the U.P. as a resource colony,” said Catherine Parker of Marquette, a sentiment echoed by many U.P. residents.

Culture Differences

The other issue is that people from the U.P. are culturally different than people from downstate. We think differently, come from different backgrounds, and even root for different sports teams. For instance, once you cross the Mackinac Bridge, most people are Green Bay Packers fans, and they tend to associate themselves more with Wisconsin than Michigan. In the western part of the U.P., the nearest large cities are Green Bay and Milwaukee.

The last time the Upper Peninsula tried to secede from Michigan was in 1970 when the state of Superior was proposed and narrowly missed passing by one vote. Had it been approved then, it would have gone on to Congress where it would have likely failed. But that hasn’t stopped the people in the U.P. from dreaming of a day when they could be free of Lansing control.

Similarities to Detroit

So why are we writing about this in a newspaper focused on the issues of Southeastern Michigan, especially considering the unlikelihood of it happening? Well, the feelings of those in the U.P. are not much different than the feelings of many in Detroit. “Lansing doesn’t represent us, they only want our resources, why can’t they just let us govern ourselves”, etc. – all refrains we’ve been hearing out of Detroit for years.

The biggest difference is that many Detroiters assume it’s a racial issue, whereas the Yoopers (as residents of the U.P. refer to themselves) don’t have that excuse. They see it for what it is – a financial issue. That’s right, like everything else in business and politics, black and white mean a whole lot less than green does. Lansing has a state to run and they have to do what makes the most financial sense for the state as a whole, even if it doesn’t seem fair to the community affected.

So to the great people of the Upper Peninsula, take comfort in the fact that you are not alone in your feelings about Lansing. But just like the people of Detroit, you’re going to have to get used to it.

After years of stagnation downtown, business leaders have finally decided to stop waiting on city leadership to get their act together. With the Mayor and city council losing some of their control, business leaders are feeling more comfortable making investment in the city.

The proud new owners of the Penobscot Building in Detroit is a real estate company out of Toronto called Triple Properties. The company already owns the Pontiac Silverdome, so their judgment on investments should be called into question. Also, the fact that Dan Gilbert didn’t like the price probably indicates that the building wasn’t quite worth the selling price, estimated at around $5 million.

The Penobscot Building is currently around 50% occupied with tenants, which is a little on the low side. To increase occupancy, Triple Properties is expected to drop rental rates to $10 per square foot, which is a lot cheaper than comparable rental rates in other buildings. That may induce more businesses to move downtown, although the City Council doubled the tax rate on businesses in Detroit so that additional cost may not make the move worth it.

Despite the best efforts by city council to drive business out of Detroit, we’re still seeing a steady flow of good news out of the city. Let’s hope the trend continues.

TechShop Detroit is the fifth franchise, with three in California and one in North Carolina. For a monthly or yearly membership fee, members are given access to various tools and equipment that would otherwise not be available to them. Tools like MIG and TIG welders, plasma cutters, 3D printers, CNC routers, CNC mills, lathes, oscilloscopes, and even industrial sized sewing machines are all included at the facility.

Additionally, there are classes at the facility that teach members how to use the equipment and allows like-minded creative types to interact with each other. It is expected that this type of creative environment, combined with the tools and equipment available will serve as an incubator for patents and business ideas. With the new patent office opening in Detroit, and the highest per capita number of engineers in the nation, it would seem that Detroit is well poised to move into the future as a hotbed of innovation.

The 38,000 square foot facility is located at 800 Republic Drive in Allen Park, next to the Detroit Lions training facility and was launched in a partnership between Ford and software company Autodesk. To use the facilities you can purchase a monthly membership for $99 or save money by getting the annual rate. Additionally, there are classes offered that are generally less than $100. Look for several package deals available such as one that provides 3 months membership to the facility and any two classes for $299. A list of the classes offered, along with their descriptions is here: http://techshop.ws/take_classes.html?storeId=6

Ford is offering free memberships to TechShop Detroit to any employees that submit ideas that are patentable. They have already received hundreds of submissions and expect to give away around 2,000 memberships due to the incentive in the first year. The hope is that many of these inventions will bring jobs to the area and help reshape the economy of Detroit.

For more information, visit their website or call 313-583-3831.

The Canadian Government was forced to investigate the source of the sound due to the high number of complaints. They determined that the sound was coming from Zug Island, which is part of River Rouge. If you think Detroit is broke, River Rouge is in worse shape. To add insult to injury, the proposed repeal of the personal property tax would completely gut River Rouge of the revenue that they do have. Fixing “The Hum” to appease the Canadians is as low down on the list of priorities as it can get.

The Canadians sent Bob Dechert to Windsor on a fact finding mission to meet with Windsor mayor Eddie Francis and several local and federal officials in the US. They used state of the art instruments to determine that the sounds were definitely coming from Zug Island.

“And that makes it an international issue,” Dechert said. “I don’t want to overstate it, but something is happening that is affecting people on the Canadian side.”

It may be an international issue, but River Rouge is broke and has no plans of doing anything to further study, or fix the issue. Further complicating the issue is the fact that giant wind turbines just went up outside of Windsor two years ago, roughly the same time that people started complaining about The Hum. Zug Island might be a mess, but it’s been a mess for a lot longer than two years.

Whether The Hum is coming from the wind turbines in Windsor or the industrial facilities on Zug Island, it’s pretty clear that the issue is going to end up in the courts before it gets resolved.

Although Chrysler is only moving 70 jobs to downtown Detroit, they are all people working in the Great Lakes Regional Sales and Marketing Division. After all, if your tag line is “imported from Detroit” it’s hard to justify that from Auburn Hills. The move comes after Chrysler announced record profits for the quarter.

Chrysler will be taking over 30,000 square feet of space in the historic Dime Building that Dan Gilbert recently purchased. This will put some of Chrysler’s key marketing and sales people much closer to the action in Detroit, and lends credence to the belief of some that Detroit is finally on the upswing.

The recent news about the M1 Light Rail finally getting enough funding to get started has only added to the sense of good news surrounding the city in general, and the downtown area in particular.

Even with the City Council trying their best to keep business away by doubling the tax rate in Detroit a few weeks ago, businesses are still moving in. At some point however, we’re going to need competent political leaders in the city, and to get that we’re going to need an informed electorate. The people of Detroit need to start taking their voting power seriously if we have any chance of recovering as a region.