Petition condition

The petitions are in. Some causes made it, and some didn’t.

The two most interesting reports surrounded an anti-abortion proposal and the Fire the Senate drive, both of which fell short of picking up the necessary 317,757 signatures to get the issue on the November general election ballot.

The anti-abortion proposal, to define life as beginning at conception, would have effectively outlawed all abortions in Michigan and given pro-life groups the tool to take a challenge to Roe vs. Wade to the new Supreme Court with Justice Roberts and Justice Alito potentially reversing or altering significantly the landmark 1973 decision that effectively made abortion legal throughout the United States. Yet the effort failed to get the blessing of Right to Life, arguably one of the most powerful special interest groups anywhere. What gives? I thought Right to Life always supported causes to make abortions illegal. Some have said it was a turf war between rival pro-life groups. But the real story is that it’s not in Right to Life’s best political interests to have its sole reason for existence taken away. After all, it does raise millions of dollars in funds and helps make a lot of lobbyists and politicians as well as ministers and activists rich and powerful.

Think about it. We’ve elected a heckuva lot of pro-life zealots to state and national offices over the last 25 years, and what have these anti-abortion champions produced in the way of legislation to outlaw the procedure? A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but a blatant attempt to milk votes from gullible single-issue voters! Oh, to be sure, we saw the end of Medicaid-funded abortions for low income women and laws like the 24-hour waiting period have been whittled around the edges. But there is something to the twisted logic that Right to Life and its ilk stand to lose an awful lot if abortion is outlawed. What then happens to Right to Life? What then happens to all those pro-life politicians who’ve nailed down massive numbers of single-issue voters after winning the blessing of the Most Reverend Right to Life? It seems as though the movers and shakers behind Michigan Right to Life decided they didn't want to know. Or perhaps they realized how it could create a backlash from the majority of voters who still support keeping abortion legal that would result in a tidal wave of voter anger putting state government in to the hands of the Democrats and demoralizing the troops (and donors) in the ultra-conservative movement for years.

Meanwhile, there seemed to be some rejoicing in Lansing and in newsrooms around the state with the news Unicameral Michigan’s “Fire the Senate” campaign failed. Many news outlets that wouldn’t give Unicameral a morsel of coverage during the time volunteers were gathering signatures circled like buzzards around the movement of its untimely death Monday. There was even a time early in the effort when the much exalted Michigan Public Radio had a news report about all the state petition drives, and conspicuous in its absence was any information about Unicameral. Fire the Senate spokespersons claimed they were marginalized by the corporate media, the State Legislature and lobbyists, so it was nearly impossible to get the job done as only a grass-roots movement.

Just as the anti-abortion measure was killed by in-fighting among the factions, the Unicameral effort seems to have died not from a lack of public support, since every journalist who bothered to report on it commented that if placed on the ballot it would likely be approved by voters, but from the callous indifference of the media which acts as a gate-keeper but you're only allowed access if you belong to the club. The lesson here: You’ve got to have money, a sugar daddy, celebrities crawling all over the place and you have to do outrageous things to get noticed. Beating the fife and drum and trying to spread the word via the Internet and telephone just doesn’t cut it.

In fact, what the anti-abortion drive and the Unicameral effort had in common was that both failed to make the ballot because they couldn't afford to "pay to play." The ballot proposals that make it to the voters overwhelmingly have resulted from special interest money that can afford to pay $1 per signature to professional companies that circulate petitions. A good example is Ward Connerly's use of millions to buy his way onto the Michigan ballot with a drive to end Affirmative Action which voters will decide on in November.

There are insidious ways to stifle freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the free exchange of ideas. The most insidious way of all is to deliberately ignore what’s going on. Another is to make freedom so expensive, the poor can't afford it. The peasants are hungry for democracy and they're not getting it from their elected officials or the gate-keepers in the media- it seems their attitude is "Let them eat cake!"