Get the Duct/Duck tape ready…
Savage was announcing his “aha!” moment tonight that possibly the people behind the health care insurance reform bill might be motivated by money (you think?)…. but he also wandered into a rant about Nancy Pelosi and her praying for her bill, and involing the Catholic church.
That wakened some old lingering concerns of mine – when I was living in Michigan in the 1980s/90s, there was a curious thing that the Department of Human Services (aka the State Welfare Department) was headed by a Catholic “Sister” who was clovsely aligned with Catholic social services agencies. It seemed likely to me that she might be inclined to facilitate state funding going to her former colleages…. but times were good, I had much more important things to worrry about… That’s not the head exploding part.
So following up wondering if one of the forces behind this bill (and the growing chorus of attacks on Glenn Beck for “outing” the liberation theology movement), I thought I would see who is running the DHS in Michigan these days.
As you probably know, Michigan is in horrible shape. Run by Democrats, unemployment approaching 15%, entire cities on the verge of being abandoned…. so DHS is surely a very important job by now…
It’s important to know that the Dearborn area SouthWest of Detroit (and home to Ford Motor Company) has become very important in the state’s politics – there are upwards of 1 million Arabs of various religions and origins and states of immigration living in the area. The State’s population is somewhere around 9 million, so the Arab vote can easily swing state or national election results (Bush’s Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham is an Arab American from Michigan)
So it turns out, since 2007 the head of Michigan DHS is one Ismael Ahmed.
Here are some items about his background and priorities:
– A nationally-recognized expert in immigration and social reform
– co-founded the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
– guest speaker at the Foreign Ministers Meeting of the League of Arab States
– written for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation publication, Arab American Political Participation in the United States.
– he was born in Brooklyn in 1947 – mother was American of Lebanese descent, father was Egyptian
– his grandmother was a community activist in New York CIty, and introduced him to Malcolm X
– he served in the Army in Korea in the 1960s
– his pro-Arab political activism began in response to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war
– his organization joined with the ACLU to insist that when the FBI talks to any arab american that a lawyer be present
– and he’s muslim….
