Standish, Michigan
It's two p.m. on a workday, and the casino parking lot is completely full. Hundreds of people have come for the $20 gambling coupons offered to those willing to donate blood. Turnout for the drive was "above and beyond" expectations, says Frank Cloutier, a spokesman for the Saginaw Chippewa Indians, who run the 800-slot complex. The nurses are already turning people away two hours before closing, and they will soon run out of blood bags.
"We get free money!" one woman tells me, clutching her coupon as her friends nod in agreement. An older gentleman says with less enthusiasm that he only comes once or twice a year. "Just when I'm trying to help pay the light bill," he admits.
Standish, a town of 1,500 people, is the seat of a county with an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent. It is one of the most impoverished counties in Michigan--the state hit hardest by the recession. In June, two months before my visit, things had gone from bad to worse: Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that the town's main economic engine--the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, which funds about one-quarter of the city's budget and is the county's largest employer--would be shuttered.
Panic ensued among residents. But on August 2 came the possibility of a lifeline: news from the White House that Standish Max was one of two prisons under consideration for a transfer of inmates from Guantánamo Bay, which President Obama has pledged to close.
Buoyed, local politicians lined up to support the transfer. "First and foremost, our goal is to keep the prison open," Republican State Representative Tim Moore told a House committee. The mayor is on board, as is the outspoken city manager, Michael Moran. "If anybody did escape, they'd have a surprise. We're a community of hunters," said Moran, a former Air Force policeman. Standish's U.S. representative, Democrat Bart Stupak, backs the idea; so do both Michigan senators.
It seemed to be a perfect match--a president in search of a place to send prisoners, a town looking for a way to save its biggest employer. That is, until Pete Hoekstra got involved.
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COMMENTS (1)
Just as patriotic working stiffs volunteer to join the military to pay their bills why can't the working stiffs in Standish Michigan be permitted to take the terrorists into their own back yards as a patriotic gesture to this great nation?
That way those of us who aren't working stiffs can continue to prosecute the war on terror knowing both that others will do the actual fighting and dying and that others will make sure the bad guys captured don't get any closer to our own communities.
Win/win right?
Sigh. The things that happen and don't happen in the name of "national security". Fortunately, we have the ever vigilant fourth estate to keep us abreast of these things.
george
Just as patriotic working stiffs volunteer to join the military to pay their bills why can't the working stiffs in Standish Michigan be permitted to take the terrorists into their own back yards as a patriotic gesture to this great nation?
That way those of us who aren't working stiffs can continue to prosecute the war on terror knowing both that others will do the actual fighting and dying and that others will make sure the bad guys captured don't get any closer to our own communities.
Win/win right?
Sigh. The things that happen and don't happen in the name of "national security". Fortunately, we have the ever vigilant fourth estate to keep us abreast of these things.
george