Revoke Her License

by Dick Mac

Mayor Joyce Daniels, of Troy, Michigan, is a licensed real estate broker.

Being licensed means that you enjoy the certification of your skills in a particular field, as judged by that industries' boards of standards and governance, or by civil law.

In this case, it is the former.

As a member of the Michigan Association of Realtors, she is required to abide by a certain set of standards that includes:

Duties To The Public

Article 10
REALTORS® shall not deny equal professional services to any person for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, or sexual orientation. REALTORS® shall not be parties to any plan or agreement to discriminate against a person or persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, or sexual orientation. (Amended 1/11)

See, Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, Effective January 1, 2011

She has stated her opposition to the rights of homosexual taxpayers to be protected under the laws of the land. As an elected official opposing the equal rights of homosexuals, she is in violation of her professional real estate license. She is party "to any plan or agreement to discriminate against a person or persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, or sexual orientation."

Not only that, she is doing it with the agreement and support of a political party (GOP), and a special interest group (Tea Party) which might make this not only a violation of her professional license, but perhaps a crime under the RICO statutes.

You can contact the Michigan Association of Realtors at their website. Perhaps you could let them know what you think of Mayor Daniels and her association with their organization.

Odd News from Last Week

My favorite recent "odd" news stories of the past week:

Parking ticket paid

Prior to the proliferation of computerization throughout all government agencies, it used to be easy to ignore parking tickets, and many people did so for many decades. Often, if you were in otherwise good-standing, the parking tickets wouldn't even be an issue when you tried to renew your license or re-register a vehicle. These days you can't escape, and all parking tickets need to be paid.

In New York City, you can pay over a hundred dollars for a simple parking ticket (expired parking meter, street cleaning, etc.) and much more than that if you block a fire hydrant or active driveway. If your car is also towed, you are looking at payment of three hundred dollars or more to retrieve your vehicle.

This story from Houghton, Michigan, is charming in its simplicity.

Woman pays off 1976 parking ticket issued in Mich.
(from AP via Yahoo!)
Sun May 11, 3:44 AM ET

Police in this Upper Peninsula town had forgotten about the $1 parking ticket written on Sept. 1, 1976. But the woman who had found it on her windshield hadn't.

The ticket, a $20 bill and a note arrived at police headquarters last month in a plain white envelope with no return address.

The note read: "I always had good intentions of paying it. I put it aside and every once in a while I would come across it and said `someday I'm going to pay it.' Now I think it's time."

The fine for an unpaid meter violation increased to $5 after 72 hours, said Police Chief David Outinen, but it hadn't increased beyond that. He told The Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton that he couldn't remember someone making good on an unpaid ticket after so much time.

The woman apparently hopes her payment closes the matter. "Please don't try and track me down. I am a respectable lady," she wrote.

And, as you know, a "respectable lady" is never contacted by the authorities!

Read the original article here.


Men Charged for Using Bong

First, I never thought I'd see the work "bong" in a news story, at least as the word refers to drug paraphernalia. As teenagers, my siblings, friends, and I used a wide assortment of apparatus for smoking marijuana: standard upright bongs, gas masks, pipes, lab parts, tubes and pieces, various types of papers, etc., including the improvised toilet-paper roll with tinfoil, and the Tampax wrapper. The guys in this news story certain take the prize for most unique and difficult-to-obtain smoking device:

Men charged after skull dug up, used as bong
(from Reuters via Yahoo!)
Fri May 9, 1:27 PM ET

Authorities in Texas have filed corpse-abuse charges against two men who allegedly removed a skull from a grave and used it as a bong.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office confirmed on Thursday that misdemeanor abuse of corpse charges have been filed in the case.

One of the men allegedly told police they dug up a grave in an abandoned cemetery in the woods, removed a head from a body and smoked marijuana using the skull as a bong.

Police found the cemetery and a grave that had been disturbed but are still investigating the rest of the story, officials said.

(Reporting by Bruce Nichols)
Read the original article here.

Here Comes The Scam

I have believed for many months that Hillary Clinton was going to be the eventual nominee to represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election.

I have said that she will not actually win the nomination, but that the power-brokers in Washington (the Bush family and friends, the Clinton family and friends, the Diebold Corporation, Howard Dean, and other election powerhouses) would simply do for Hillary that which was done for George W Bush in Florida in 200 and Ohio in 2004: they would rig the process to ensure that the candidate most appealing to the conservatives would win. In 2008, that candidate is Hillary Clinton: champion of corporate interests, anti-labor hero, and homophobe supreme.

Clinton has packaged herself as a liberal for many years, but her positions on the issues are the positions of a conservative.

She is losing the race to become the Democratic nominee to Barack Obama. Her momentum was dead in the water, then she won a couple of states that use Diebold voting machines (including Ohio, which has been devastated by her support of NAFTA), and her campaign is re-born. Now the chairman of the Democratic Party wants to change party rules to allow her to get the delegates from Florida and Michigan, which states have had their delegates nullified for breaking Party rules. When Clinton was the front-runner, she wanted those states punished for their rules-breaking; now that she can win by manipulating their delegates, she wants them reinstated.

Things are bad. Things are worse than we think.

Read more at The Huffington Post: Dean Urges Do-Over Voting in Fla., Mich.