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The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - 3

GoVERNMENT
Bush, pope among
nominees for 2004
Nobel Peace Prize
President Bush, along with Pope
John Paul II and two U.N. officials
involved in the search for Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruc-
tion, are two of 144 individuals and 50
organizations nominated for the 2004
Nobel Peace Prize. Yesterday was the
final deadline for nominations.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair -
who joined the Bush administration in
supporting the war in Iraq was also
nominated.
Gay marriages bring
misdemeanor
charges on mayor
The mayor of New Paltz, N.Y. was
indicted on 19 criminal accounts for ini-
tiating ceremonies for same-sex couples
yesterday. According to Ulster County
domestic relations law, Mayor Jason
West committed a misdemeanor for per-
forming the rites for couples without
licenses, Ulster County District Attorney
Donald Williams said. The maximum
penalty West faces is one year in prison.
Granholm expected
to approve 10
environment bills
Gov. Jennifer Granholm is likely to
sign a group of bills she received yes-
terday that would set guidelines on out-
of-state trash dumped in Michigan and
impose a two-year moratorium on new
landfills in the state. The state Senate
unanimously passed the 10 bills, which
include one that would expand the
powers of the Michigan Department of
Environmental Equality.
Court denies states
power to regulate
phone firms

MSA pushes for registration alterations

By Cianna Freeman.
Daily Staff Reporter
The Michigan Student Assembly will work
with the University to make registration more fair
for students after passing a resolution last night in
favor of revising the process of how students pick
classes.
Currently, students are placed in seven brack-
ets, depending on their number of credits. Each
bracket covers a range of 15 credits. For example,
all students who currently have between 70 and
84 credits would place into the third bracket.
Within each bracket, students then participate in a
lottery for a registration date to choose courses
for the next semester.

The newly proposed registration process
would create more brackets, lowering each
range from 15 to five credits, and would help
guarantee students a registration appointment
that better reflects their academic standing, rep-
resentatives said.
MSA has received complaints about the pres-
ent lottery system. Problems included some stu-
dents registering on the same day as others with
many fewer credits.
Several representatives raised concerns with
the resolution. MSA Vice President Monique
Perry said shortening the brackets will heighten
the disparity among students.
MSA Communications Committee Chair
Rachel Fisher, an LSA senior, added that many

high schools do not offer any Advanced Place-
ment classes that give students extra credits.
Reducing the brackets exacerbates the problem
of unfairness, she added.
Proponents of the resolution researched other
schools that had limited brackets.
"Northwestern only has five-credit brack-
ets," MSA Rep. Anita Leung said. The resolu-
tion is not about the AP credit problem but
about the registration brackets, which would
put registering on a more even playing field,
added Leung.
But Rep. Sam Woll asserted that the Uni-
versity is different from such schools
because of its student body's unique compo-
sition.

Other University student governments have
already passed the registration resolution.
"LSA is the largest school on campus and (the
LSA Student Government) passed it," Rep.
Daniel Edelman said. "The Engineering school is
the second largest school and has passed the reso-
lution too.
Some representatives said they wanted the
assembly to delay voting on the resolution to
allow for further research on the effects of the
bracket reduction on students.
"I would like us to do more research on our
school and look at the average range of students
coming in with AP credits here," Rep. Ashley
Whitfield said. "I feel that we shouldn't be pres-
sured by the time limit."

A stitch bi time saves niie

Nader angers Democrats,
focuses on domestic issues

DORY GANNES/Daily
Ann Arbor resident Nancy Byllica knits during a creative
workshop put on by the Michigan League. Yesterday was the first
of a three- day class on learning how to knit socks.
Car sales not much
better in February
&~' F b-OMU

By Michael Gurovitsch
Daily Staff Reporter
After all but clinching the Denocra-
tic- presidential nomination last night,
Sen. John Kerry is looking forward to
jousting with President Bush for the
White House.
But the 2000 election "spoiler" is
still lurking in the political shadows,
poised to make a third run at the
presidency.
Much to the chagrin of many
prominent Democrats, consumer
advocate Ralph Nader officially
announced his decision to run for
president as an independent candi-
date last week, igniting fears of a
repeat of the 2000 election and the
Florida debacle.
Many leading Democrats have
accused Nader of costing Al Gore the
2000 presidential election by accumu-
lating votes - many of which presum-
ably would have gone to Gore - in
closely contested states.
But Nader was adamant that his
campaign would stand out from
both the Republican and Democratic
platforms.
"There is a compelling necessity
for a new strengthening of the people
to reform and recover their public
elections from the grip of private
financing - to rescue our public
authorities from the corporate gov-
ernment of big business," Nader said
in a Feb. 23 speech to the National
Press Club.
Nader first rose to prominence in
1965 after releasing his best selling
book "Unsafe at Any Speed," which
chronicled the dangers of the Chevro-
let Corvair. Henthen used the money he

won in a settlement with the car's manu-
facturers General Motors Corp., whom
he sued for invasion of privacy after they
launched a smear campaign against him,
to start his consumer activism.
"He is a guy who has spent his
whole life and career dedicated to try-
ing to improve American society for all
of its citizens," political science Prof.
Hanes Walton Jr. said.
Nader has tried to fashion himself
as an outsider who would put people
ahead of corporations, something he
says neither major party has been
able to do.
He advocates shifting the tax bur-
den to the wealthiest Americans and
to corporations and overhauling the
federal budget so it focuses. more on
"human needs" and less on "corporate
militarism."
Nader previously ran for president in
1996 and 2000 as
a Green Party can-
didate. He
received 549,950
votes in 1996 and
2,882,995 votes in
2000.
After nearly
four years, the
memory of
Nader's impact on
Nader the 2000 Florida
presidential vote is still a contentious
topic. Gore lost Florida - and con-
sequently the presidency - by 537
votes. Nader received 97,488 votes
in the state.
"If you took the number of votes
(Nader) got in some states (in
2000), they are greater than the plu-
rality by either the Democratic or
Republican party carried those

"It will be a shame if
his legacy is helping
elect George Bush
twice:'
- Mark Brewer
Michigan Democratic Party,
Excecutive Chair
states," Walton said.
"If you add those votes to the loser,
the loser would win those states ... The
outcome would've been Al Gore win-
ning the election," he added.
Mark Brewer, executive chair of the
Michigan Democratic Party, said he is
disappointed Nader is running.
"It will be a shame if his legacy
is helping elect George Bush
twice," Brewer said, adding that
voters who are inclined to support
Nader would find the Democratic
nominee appealing.
In 2000, Nader received 2 percent of
the Michigan vote behind Gore with 51
percent and Bush with 47 percent.
"There are people all over the
country who wish he hadn't done it
(before). They remember the 2000
election, they remember New
Hampshire, they remember Florida
and the margins of victories there,"
said Democrat National Committee
Chairman Terry McAuliffe, speak-
ing on CBS's "Face the Nation" the
same day Nader announced his
decision.
The Nader campaign"could not be
reached by phone for comment yes-
terday.

An appeals court yesterday rejected
federal rules giving states more author-
ity to determine which companies may
offer local phone service within their
borders.
The three-judge panel of the Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals in the District
of Columbia unanimously sided with
former Bell companies Verizon, Bell-
South, SBC and Qwest. They
claimed the rules adopted by the Fed-
eral Communications Commission
forced them to give competitors
access to their networks at artificially
low prices.
It's the third time the commission's
attempts to write rules for local tele-
phone service competition have been
rejected by the courts. The latest rul-
ing decried the FCC's "apparent
unwillingness to adhere to prior judi-
cial rulings."
At issue is how to spur competition
for local telephone service, which Con-
gress mandated in 1996.
Greenspan: Weak
dollar will help
U.S. trade deficit
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan said yesterday that a weak
U.S. dollar would most likely assuage
the nation's trade deficit. The dollar's
reduced value makes U.S. goods
increasingly cheap for foreign con-
sumers, while making domestic
goods more expensive to Americans.
The U.S. account deficit reached
$550 billion last year, forcing the
United States to borrow from foreign
creditors.
9-11 commission
may receive
extension on work
Dennis Hastert, speaker of the U.S.
House of Representatives, said yester-
day he expects passage of legislation
granting the federal panel reviewing
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks more time
to complete its job.
The panel, known as the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States, was originally
scheduled to release data May 27 con-
cerning the U.S. response to the
tragedy. Members of Congress have
asked for a two-month extension of
that deadline.
Mich. caucuses
second-largest in
state history
The Michigan Democratic Party
announced that this year's state caucuses
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DETROIT (AP) - The auto indus-
try yesterday reported its second-
straight month of sluggish sales with a
meager 5 percent increase over last
February's bleak results in the run-up
to the war in Iraq. The three U.S.
automakers - General Motors Corp.,
Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler
AG's Chrysler Group - saw com-
bined sales rise just 2 percent.
Asian brands performed better, with
Nissan Motor Co. reporting a 46.1 per-
cent increase over last year and Toyota
Motor Corp. claiming a 17.7 percent
increase. Honda Motor Co. reported
that sales rose 7.1 percent.
The seasonally adjusted annual
sales rate for February was 16.4 mil-
lion units, compared with 15.6 million
in February 2003.
The sales rate indicates what sales
for the full year would be if they
remained at the same pace for all 12
months. Full-year sales for 2003
were 16.7 million.The sluggish begin-
ning to 2004 could be the result of
intensive sales at the end of the year,
said David Healy, an analyst with Burn-
ham Securities Inc.
"We may still be feeling a hangover
from the sales blowout in December,"
he said. Despite the lackluster results,

many auto executives were optimistic.
"The end of last year, plus all the
positive economic data, seemed to
suggest a pretty strong 2004,"
Chrysler Group chief executive Dieter
Zetsche said at the Geneva Interna-
tional Motor Show. "I still believe
that, but the first two months don't
show too much of it."
However, Jim Press, executive vice
president of Toyota's U.S. operations,
warned that if fuel prices continue to
climb, it could adversely impact the
market.
GM, the world's biggest automak-
er, said it sold 6 percent more vehi-
cles, including a 9.4 percent increase
in car sales and a 3.4 percent rise in
truck sales.
Paul Ballew, GM's executive director
for market and industry analysis, said
the results were in line with the com-
pany's expectations. Ford, meanwhile,
saw sales fall 3.2 percent. Car sales
dropped 15.2 percent, while truck sales
were up 3.3 percent, buoyed by the
continued success of F-series pickups.
The nation's No. 2 automaker attrib-
uted the February sales decrease to
declining sales to fleet customers,
which it said reflects its decision to
move away from the daily rental market.


Corrections:
An article on Page 1 of yesterday's Daily should have said Nick Rutledge is
an LSA junior.
Please report any errors in the Daily to corrections@michigandaily.com

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