3-News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Tuesday, April 7, 2015 — 3
DETROIT, Michigan
Officials investigate
Nissan safety issues
The government is investi-
gating the Nissan Versa and
Versa Note subcompact cars
because the driver’s foot can
allegedly get caught in the
trim panel that holds the car-
pet.
The National Highway Traf-
fic Safety Administration has
been looking into the issue
since last June. This week, the
agency said it is no longer look-
ing at 2012 and 2013 models of
the Versa, which don’t have the
same trim panel design. But it’s
still investigating 360,000 cars
from the 2014 and 2015 model
years.
NHTSA
has
received
at
least one report of a crash in
which the trim panel allegedly
delayed the driver’s ability to
apply the brakes. The driver
sustained minor injuries.
COBIN, Kentucky
Canadians travel
2000 miles for KFC
Two thousand miles might
seem like a long way to go for
fried chicken.
Two men from Canada who
took their sons on a journey to
the original home of Kentucky
Fried Chicken say it’s a trip
they’ll never forget.
The Times-Tribune reports
this was the third trip to the
Harland Sanders Cafe and
Museum for Brian Lutfy, one
of the fathers who piled the
four sons into a van for the
34-hour
pilgrimage
from
Montreal, Quebec. His tales of
earlier visits inspired the trip.
The friends left on Thurs-
day,
traveling
to
Colonel
Sanders’ birthplace and burial
place before arriving at the
Corbin restaurant Saturday
afternoon.
—Compiled from
Daily wire reports
NEWS BRIEFS
misunderstanding the Moynihan
report.
“Kristof and Will, following
in a tradition nearly as old as the
report itself, misrepresent the his-
tory of the report, misrepresent
the controversy over the report
and
perpetuate
a
misguided
approach to understanding racial
and class inequality,” Geary said.
Geary said Moynihan pointed
to the deteriorating structure of
the Black family to explain high
crime and unemployment rates,
arguing for more advanced poli-
cy measures to address cultural
challenges to inequality, such as
full male employment. Geary said
Moynihan framed policy issues
of housing and employment dis-
crimination as family issues to
appeal to white audiences.
Geary said the report encour-
aged Americans to focus on Black
cultural traits instead of problems
within the political economy,
such as unemployment, educa-
tion, housing and taxes, to explain
racial inequality.
“Racial and class inequality
are again on the national agenda
today just as they were years ago
when Moynihan wrote, yet an
ambiguous and flawed govern-
ment report written a half cen-
tury ago is hardly a good starting
place for discussing these issues
in our own time,” Geary said.
Geary said Black power advo-
cates criticized the report, argu-
ing it upholds white domination
and creates a structure where
white sociologists define Black
culture.
He also said Black feminist
critique of the report argues the
report portrayed Black mothers
as promiscuous and subservi-
ent to men. Geary said the report
itself assumed the natural supe-
riority of two-parent household
where the father is the main
breadwinner. He used this argu-
ment to claim matriarchal culture
of Black families was at fault for
the racial inequality and that jobs
given to Black women took neces-
sary jobs away from Black men.
“Critical commemoration of
the report from conservatives
and many liberals threatens, once
again, to distract from real policy
inequities and injustices in Amer-
ican society,” Geary said. “It is
high-time we stop celebrating the
Moynihan report.”
Alemu discussed his own work
on understanding the effects of
absent fathers in the Black com-
munity. He said since the Moyni-
han report was published in 1965,
the number of families without a
father has tripled.
Though in the report Moyni-
han suggests the solution to racial
inequality is to put more Black
men to work, Alemu found no
links between employment and
fatherhood.
“No man I’ve spoken to so far
suggests that, ‘If only my father
had been employed, he would
have been present,’ or suggests
that they can specifically cite his
unemployment for absence as a
father.”
Geary emphasized that while
the report contains flaws, it
should not be dismissed. The
report prompted a conversa-
tion about how Black family life
relates to social inequality, yet
became derailed when political
commentators focused on family
while putting less emphasis on
larger issues.
“Of
course,
people
should
research African American fami-
lies,” Geary said. “Families are
related in a complicated way to
economic and social inequality,
but if we are only talking about
families and we aren’t talking
about other important things like
taxes, employment, those are the
places to start.”
with patients.
However, Medicare deter-
mines
reimbursement
for-
mulas based on a specialties
— such as surgery or inter-
nal medicine — instead of
how doctors actually spend
their time. The study found
that
face-to-face
meetings
between
neurologists
and
their patients are not compen-
sated as much as they are for
other types of physicians.
“I think that as a pay-
ment system, (Medicare is)
designed now so that face-
to-face services are generally
not reimbursed as much as
doing procedures,” she said.
“As neurologists, many of our
services are not amenable to
treatment by procedure, but
are highly valued in these
encounters. So we think that
should be thought more care-
fully about. What’s the value?
We’re certainly not doing pro-
cedures for many of our neu-
rologic patients.”
Kerber said the study pro-
vided information about the
makeup of the neurological
workforce. He said this data
could serve as a tool to deter-
mine how neurologists are
paid and incentivized in rela-
tion to the way they practice
medicine.
“Prior to the study, there
was very little information
available to actually under-
stand neurology practice in
the United States in terms of
payments and types of ser-
vices rendered,” he said. “We
had a unique opportunity to
look at that given the public
release of the Medicare data
regarding all physicians paid
by Medicare.”
Skolarus said health care
policies should value the ser-
vices different types of doc-
tors provide, and that she
hopes this study can provide
data to show that the services
neurologists provide are more
often base din evaluation and
management.
“There’s a Medicare bonus
and a Medicaid bump for
certain specialties to receive
extra payment for face-to-
face time, and neurology was
not one of those specialties,”
Skolarus said. “We hoped
that this would provide a data
point for both neurologists
and policy-makers to show
that neurologists look more
like primary care specialties
than they look like surgical
specialties.”
In addition to the complexi-
ties associated with neuro-
logical diseases, Skolarus said
medical treatments for neuro-
logical patients are often fine-
ly tuned and adjusted during
face-to-face visits.
Kerber and Skolarus both
said complex diseases like
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
often require an increased
level of attention from the
doctor. Because face-to-face
interactions are important,
they should be properly com-
pensated by Medicare. The
researchers said this is a pri-
mary reason why it’s impor-
tant to look at Medicare policy
in the context of how doctors
spend their time.
“I think that the goal of our
study and what we’re finding
is that we think as healthcare
reform comes about, that the
value of what different spe-
cialties do should be care-
fully determined,” Skolarus
said. “There’s certainly value
in
both
doing
procedures
and doing more face-to-face
patient contact. Those should
be
determined
for
what
they’re worth and not in such
black and white.”
MOYNIHAN
From Page 1
MEDICARE
From Page 1
the Ku Klux Klan, especially in
the South. He said Robert Byrd, a
former U.S. senator, enrolled 150
recruits in a chapter of the KKK
in West Virginia, yet still served
in the Senate as a Democrat until
his death in 2010. Byrd later called
his involvement in the KKK a “sad
mistake.”
“Do you honestly think a Repub-
lican with the KKK on his resume
would have had this much slack cut
for him?” Murdock said.
Murdock said, as a Republican,
he blames large government and
over-regulation for laws such as
segregation and other laws that
marginalized
Black
Americans
throughout history.
“For those of us that talk about
the dangers of big government, Jim
Crow was an example of big gov-
ernment activism,” Murdock said.
During the question and answer
section of the lecture, LSA senior
Michael Chrzan expressed his
skepticism with some of the things
Murdock discussed. For example,
in the beginning of the talk, Mur-
dock referred to Martin Luther
King Jr. as a Republican.
“I was just wondering what sup-
port you had for your claim that
Martin Luther King was a Repub-
lican when in a 1958 interview he
was quoted saying, ‘I don’t think
that the Republican Party is a party
full of the almighty God nor is the
Democratic Party, they both have
weaknesses and I’m not inextrica-
bly bound to either party,’” Chrzan
said.
Murdock said his research has
found Martin Luther King Jr. to be
a member of the Republican Party,
at least for a portion of time.
“My understanding was that he
was a Republican early on and then
switched in support of Democrats
in 1964 after the Civil Rights Act
was passed by LBJ,” Murdock said.
Chrzan said he thought the lec-
ture discussed interesting points,
but he still found the discussion a
one-sided point of view.
“I think if you’re going to talk
about someone as historical as
MLK you would know that MLK
himself didn’t qualify himself as
a member of your party,” Chrzan
said.
Murdock said he found these
talks to be a productive exercise,
especially for furthering discus-
sion on campus.
“I thought the audience was
very attentive, they asked very
intelligent and often challenging
questions,” Murdock said. “I would
not describe anything as discourte-
ous or impolite, I know other con-
servatives that have appeared on
campuses have been shouted down
or their presentations have been
disrupted.”
POLITICAL
From Page 1
is done by other who are farther
along in the process,” he said.
After council adopted the
Housing
Affordability
and
Equity Analysis in February,
Councilmember Jane Lumm
(I–Ward
2)
said
accessory
dwelling units have been iden-
tified as a priority and further
work is taking place the con-
sider the option.
“When this was previously
studied there was a significant
effort on the part of the plan-
ning staff at the time,” Lumm
said Monday. “There was also
an accessory dwelling unit
(committee) and I was part of
that. There were significant rec-
ommendations made. There is a
lot of work that has been done
and a lot of this does not need to
be reinvented.”
After public commentary
ended, most of the attendants
left the meeting.
Ann Arbor Mayor Christo-
pher Taylor (D) was not pres-
ent in the meeting. In Taylor’s
absence, Councilmember Sabra
Briere (D–Ward 1) presided
over the meeting.
City Council approved the
resolution that confirms the
Nixon Road Sidewalk Special
Assessment Roll. This resolu-
tion calls for the construction
of a 5-foot sidewalk on Nixon
Road. The estimated cost of the
project is $14,537.
In response to Councilmem-
ber Jack Eaton’s (D–Ward 4)
question if it is possible to install
streetlights at the same time as
sidewalk construction so as
to avoid future construction,
Craig Hupy, Ann Arbor pub-
lic services administrator, said
streetlights are not included in
the budget.
“Typically when we put
streetlights in this time period,
the way we do construction
we don’t cut them in. We drill
them and only where the bases
are the lights themselves do we
actually open up the ground, so
the impact of putting them in is
minimized,” Hupy said.
City Council also approved a
resolution to create a skatepark
advisory committee for Ann
Arbor’s skatepark.
Though the originally pro-
posed resolution called for only
seven members, Councilmem-
ber Eaton nominated an eighth
member, Councilmember Ste-
phen Kunselman (D–Ward 3),
and the additional appointment
was approved by the council.
Ultimately, the committee is
slated to have nine members.
The committee consists of
city employees, as well as two
members of the Friends of Ann
Arbor Skatepark organization.
This advisory committee is
meant to provide advice and
feedback to assist city staff in
the maintenance and operation
of the skatepark and to orga-
nize and promote events in the
skatepark, among other respon-
sibilities.
Councilmember
Mike
Anglin (D–Ward 5), who spon-
sored the resolution, said this is
one of the largest cooperative
projects between the private
sector and the city that he could
remember.
“I am glad that people who
are involved at the grassroots
level here remain committed to
this because it will need main-
tenance as time goes on and
some other things. Everybody
knows the popularity of this,”
he said.
Committee members serve
two-year terms.
City Council will reconvene
Monday, April 13, to discuss the
budget for the fiscal years of
2016 and 2017.
DWELLING
From Page 1
porting various political causes,
but this is his first time run-
ning for elected office.
“I am a proactive person
who supports democratic val-
ues, progressive values, pro-
gressive infrastructure and
environmental stewardship,”
Magiera said.
Magiera has worked at the
University in various capaci-
ties related to computer ser-
vices and programming for
more than 10 years and also
runs a business that offers
digital
and
programming
services. Magiera said these
experiences will prove useful
to bridging the gap between
government and citizens.
“I feel that my experience
with managing information
will be a useful addition to
City Council right now,” he
said. “And I think that data
is very important right now
for understanding where our
money goes, our tax money
goes, understanding how ser-
vices
work,
understanding
how well they work and things
of that nature”.
Magiera said another rea-
son he is running is his belief
that Eaton has not provided
effective solutions to the city’s
challenges during his time in
office. Magiera said he con-
siders himself a “uniter” and
someone who can offer viable
solutions.
“He’s known for saying
‘no’ to things, but he’s not
known for providing alter-
nate solutions or suggesting
ways through which things
can move forward,” Magiera
said. “And I think right now
we need someone in that posi-
tion who is willing to suggest
things that can move us for-
ward and provide some inspi-
ration.”
In response, Eaton said he
has brought forward ideas and
accepted compromises when
he has been in disagreement
with others rather than stand-
ing in opposition of proposed
legislation.
Eaton’s
main
concerns
include
infrastructure
and
road repairs, and he suggested
using a portion of the budget
for to support such projects.
Eaton also said the southern
part of the 4th Ward faces
flooding and sewage problems
that need to be addressed.
Eaton said another problem
in his ward is the high cost of
living. Homeowners have dif-
ficulty staying in their houses
due to the high property taxes
that arise from rising property
values.
“We want to make sure
that people who are on a fixed
income aren’t priced out of
our city,” he said. “We want
to make sure that we iden-
tify how to provide housing
that is affordable for a person
who works in the service sec-
tor that is notorious for low
wages. And we want to make
sure we can provide shelter for
the chronically homeless.”
Magiera noted that afford-
able housing is related to other
housing issues in the city.
Construction of large housing
structures has priced out peo-
ple making below the median
income level.
“That needs to be addressed
because there are economic
and social implications of a
city where only those who
make above a medium-lev-
el income can afford to live
there and can afford to shop
there, can afford to eat at the
restaurants, etc. We have to
be careful to not isolate our
community because that could
have economic and cultural
repercussions,” Magiera said.
He added that he wants to
maintain the city’s parks and
incorporate
environmental
and green technology into the
community and foster art-
ists in Ann Arbor. He noted
improvements in pedestrian
safety and accessibility; bicy-
cle safety and infrastructure
as key areas of focus.
Magiera said his candidacy
is disadvantaged by Eaton’s
incumbency. He said anoth-
er challenge he faces is that
Eaton has tapped into the frus-
tration that people previously
had with city government for
his political advantage.
“I think that is kind of a dis-
advantage because he has that
momentum going,” he said.
“But I am hoping to override
that momentum with positive
energy and tapping into the
possibility that government
has to enrich our lives and to
be honest and to be straight-
forward, not corrupt, not full
of bureaucracy, efficient.”
When asked to comment
on
Magiera’s
assessment,
Eaton said that point does not
deserve a response and that he
will let the voters decide.
Magiera also said Eaton
presents many situations as
either downtown issues or
neighborhood issues. Magiera
said he finds this disingenu-
ous, as he believes that there
is no divide between the resi-
dents and downtown area.
“Quite frankly, when I’ve
asked people as I’ve been can-
vassing for the campaign, they
generally say things that are
ubiquitous throughout the city
and that deal with the entire
city and the downtown area
infrastructure and stuff like
that,” he said, adding that they
want better infrastructure,
mass transit and pedestrian
safety, issues which are perti-
nent to the whole city.
Eaton said the situation is
not as simple as Magiera pres-
ents it, but that he has placed
a higher priority on the neigh-
borhoods than prior council
members have.
“To the extent that taking
care of basic services in the
neighborhood costs the down-
town, I suppose I would place
a higher priority in the neigh-
borhoods,” he said.
Eaton is in the process of
collecting the necessary sig-
natures to gain a spot on the
ballot, while Magiera said he
has already collected the suf-
ficient number.
The Democratic Primary is
scheduled for August 4. The
general election is scheduled
for Nov. 3.
WARD
From Page 1A
type of convenient, quick busi-
ness news read.”
Not only did 250 people sub-
scribe to his content, but about
a dozen other students also
contacted him, asking why he
wasn’t pursuing this newslet-
ter in business form. Shortly
after, Rief and Business junior
Brady Akman, director of daily
operations for The Morning
Brew, joined the team.
“And we just developed
the hell out of this project,”
Lieberman said. “We wanted
to make it professional, make it
an actual product that people
would enjoy consuming and
that’s what took it from my old
Market Corner to now, what
The Morning Brew is.”
Akman said he believes the
expansion of The Morning
Brew has set it apart from busi-
ness newsletter competitors
for one reason in particular
— the strong writers they’ve
employed.
“Without the hard work of
the writers, this would never
be possible,” he said.
MORNING BREW
From Page 2