The Detroit Free Press reports that Proposal C, the ballot proposal to revise the city’s 1997 charter, passed by a nearly 20 point margin.

The revisions approved Tuesday include creating a Board of Ethics and Office of Inspector General to investigate alleged ethical or criminal violations. Also, the council now will be able to remove elected and appointed officials on the recommendation of the Board of Ethics.

The revised charter also requires lobbyists and contractors to reveal financial connections with elected officials.

It also includes council elections by district, which already had been approved by voters last year. The revised charter, however, requires candidates to live in their district for a year.

The revisions were drafted by a charter commission that was elected in 2009.

Mlive Detroit blogger Jeff Wattrick writes that the charter approval is the culmination of ongoing reform efforts that include the election of Mayor Dave Bing and the 2009 transformation of City Council.

… now Detroit has a new governing document that allows for an elected police commission, an independent Inspector General to investigate ethics issues, district elections for Council, and affords Council some advise-and-consent powers for key mayoral appointees.

All of which is the result of smart decisions by voters. Continued attempts to paint Detroiters as stupid, buffoonish, or incapable of handling their own affairs can only be the result of ignorance and bigotry.

More often than not, Detroit voters are getting it right.

But in the U.S., a different news advisory was released to media firms and to the public — one with a more generic headline and with the reference to humiliating authorities deleted.

According to Department of Justice records, the firm behind this PR turn-about is Qorvis Communications, a United States public relations firm that provides “press and public relations services” for Bahrain and which has worked with the country since 2002. The firm also has a contract to provide similar services for the Yemeni government’s “National Awareness Authority,” a state communications arm founded by Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, nephew of the vacated President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose regime has been repeatedly condemned for human rights abuses. In the last year, the countries paid more than $500,000 to Qorvis.

An investigation by The American Independent with research assistance provided by the Project on Government Oversight found that the state of Virginia also currently employs Qorvis’s PR services. All told, the state has had slightly more than $70 million in dealings with the company.

Virginia’s contract dates to 2007 (link), when the state awarded the firm an approximately $2 million per year contract to provide “marketing, advertising and communications” services, in addition to $18 million per year in media and production costs handled by the company. The firm’s contract was renewed in 2010, with an agreement to provide only “communications” services, and at the cost of $300,000 per year. Qorvis’s contract will be up for second renewal in April, 2012.

Since the firm’s work began, Virginia has since had record-breaking lottery sales, netting $1.4 billion during the last fiscal year — $444.2 million of which the state put towards education. Jeff Caldwell, press secretary for Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who appointed the head of the lottery, declined to comment on the relationship, saying “this contract predates this administration.”

"Beating marks on the back of Nabeel Rajab after police attacked a peaceful protest on July, 15 005" Img via Bahrain Center for Human Rights

A portfolio of the work Qorvis provided to the state can found on Qorvis’s website. Jill Vaughn, director of communications for the lottery, said the firm “help[s] us day to day. If we have a crisis they are very helpful, and we have a lot of special projects throughout the year.” In the last year, the firm has worked on marketing events and promotions — especially for new products. Qorvis did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Both Bahrain and Yemen have come under scrutiny of late for perceived human rights abuses. Yemen, in particular, has been censured by the United Nations for the killing of a journalist and for stifling free speech. The government of Bahrain, long seen as a U.S. ally in the region, has of late been harshly criticized. Freedom House, a human rights watchdog, issued a policy brief today titled “Killing the Messenger: Bahrain’s Brutal Crackdown,” detailing state violence and torture and calling for the U.S. to apply pressure to the country.

According to the New York Times, rights groups estimate that since protests began, “at least 34 people have been killed, more than 1,400 have been arrested and as many as 3,600 have been dismissed from jobs” in Bahrain. Earlier this fall, Doctors Without Borders and other medical groups were pitched in a fight with the country over the torture and imprisonment of doctors who had treated ailing protesters. And according to Reuters, the leader of a fact-finding mission setup by the country to investigate allegations of human rights violations now believes “torture had been a systematic, though limited, policy.”

Amateur video shot earlier this year and posted on LiveLeak appears to show protesters killed in drive-by shootings conducted by the police.

“Bahrain is taking a turn for the worse on human rights,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, in a release this April.  The Obama administration suspended and is reviewing its arms sales policy to the country after a number of U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-Pa.) called for a cessation. Bahrain’s internal fact-finding commission, and subsequent review of alleged torture, is being closely watched by the U.S. as it determines whether to renew its arms agreement.

Virginians alerted to the dealings often expressed exasperation at the state’s use of resources. In some cases, though, the reactions were more personal.

Robert Marrow, board of trustees and chair of the government relations committee at the Adams Center, a northern Virginia mosque and one of the largest Muslim community centers in the United States, said that some of his community members fled from the regimes whose “image” Qorvis’s services are meant to enhance.

“They would oppose that if they had a say,” he said. “Their preference would be against who have made money with blood money on their hands. And if they’re going to be providing a public service they should be people who should have a somewhat higher moral standard.”

Rev. Eddy Aliff, executive director for the Virginia Assembly of Independent Baptists, said that Baptists would likely share that concern, and that he believes the state should “be putting money in the proper places to individuals who truly need that help, and I think that is how most of us who are Baptists would view it.”

Some saw it simply as a business dealing gone awry. “Virginians on a whole are slightly right of center. which means they’re more fiscally conservative than not,” explained Quentin Kidd, chair of the Department of Government at Christopher Newport University.

For Imad Damaj, president of the Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs, the business fundamentals don’t add up.  “My suggestion is to the state of Virginia is to look into this company and see if you can do business with another one that is not doing these things,” he said. “It is morally right and from a business perspective it is right.”

The Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that looks into the effective use of taxpayer resources and which provided The American Independent with records of Qorvis’s PR work for Bahrain, urged transparency on the issue. Ben Freeman, a national security fellow, said, “Virginia residents, whose money is used to pay Qorvis, have a right to know that the company also works to control the media spin for governments that many believe to be guilty of human rights violations.”

Qorvis has repeatedly come under the spotlight for its employment by autocratic regimes, beginning in 2002 when the company was hired by Saudi Arabia in the wake of 9/11 for the purposes of improving the country’s image after it was revealed the majority of hijackers had been of Saudi origin. While a number of firms perform this type of work, often the transactions go more smoothly. Three of the firm’s partners soon left Qorvis out of discomfort with the relationship. Shortly after, the FBI searched the company’s offices.

That scenario repeated itself this spring when more than a third of the firm’s partners left amidst concern about Qorvis work for Middle East regimes with troubled human rights records. “I just have trouble working with despotic dictators killing their own people,” a former Qorvis insider told The Huffington Post.

According to that same insider, Qorvis’s Geo-Political Solutions (GPS) division has a ‘”black arts” program responsible for creating fake blogs and websites that link back to positive content, “to make sure that no one online comes across the bad stuff.”

Last month The New York Times, commenting on the work of foreign relation firms such as Qorvis in Bahrain, reported about a surge in Bahraini trolls — social media users who “cajole, harass and intimidate commentators and journalists who write about the protests in Bahrain and the government’s response.” Guardian writer Brian Whitaker, who has extensively analyzed the firm’s PR techniques, including in some of the documents referenced in the beginning of this article, blogged how Qorvis attempts to present Bahrain as a tolerant country.

The firm’s founder and CEO, Michael Petruzzello, told the Huffington Post that complaints about clientele are “ridiculous” and disingenuous, asserting that the firm’s work with international clients preceded the tenure of departing partners. And the firm’s clients also include household names such as the Dance Institute of Washington, The Washington Post, Intel and the Rosslyn Business Improvement District, according to the firm’s website.

Department of Justice files confirm that news releases issued on behalf of the “Bahrain Ministry of Interior” are issued by Qorvis. Those newswires often reach a wider U.S. audience, such as this release posted by the Sacremento Bee.

Other examples of the firm’s work include a press release dated June 24 that describes the sentencing of 21 individuals convicted of plotting to violently topple Bahrain’s government and of the country’s commitment to fair judicial process. CNN covered the same event noting that Britain’s foreign office minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, was “extremely concerned” over the sentencing and the nature of many of the charges. “It is deeply worrying that civilians are being tried before tribunals chaired by a military judge, with reports of abuse in detention, lack of access to legal counsel and coerced confessions,” he said.

This July, Bahrain had its “National Dialogue,” a program by the state that attempts to achieve national unity on issues of politics and religion. Days before this year’s “Dialogue,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner visited Bahrain to encourage the government to speak with dissenters. But the Shia-oriented al-Wefaq, the largest political opposition group in Bahrain and one of the most fervent protest voices in the country, and the General Federation of Bahrain Trade Unions, withdrew, claiming their concerns, including the rehiring of fired workers, had been ignored in the talks.

At that time, Qorvis issued a glowing press release on behalf of the Kingdom of Bahrain saying, “All the participants are actively debating the issues.” On the same day, Reuters published an article quoting a more inclusive choice of voices: “To reach a complete solution to the big problems, you have five minutes to speak? What is that?” asked Sayed al-Mousawi of the main Shi’ite opposition group Wefaq, quoted in the article. “Is this dialogue?” Two days later, Qorvis issued another press release, praising a “second successful day.”

On the ground in Bahrain, however, the results of the talks have been less than successful. Last week, according to the New York Times, Ali Hassan al-Daihi, the 70-year-old father of an al-Wefaq leader, died after being beaten by police officers the night before. In an extensively blogged post, The Times explained how mourners to his death were forbidden from returning to a symbolic square. It also showed video of police vehicles charging protesters and of a Bahrani police’s statement about its using its vehicles that way: “These allegations don’t have an iota of truth, being baseless,” the official said.

The Inspector General for the U.S. State Department has responded to a request from more than a dozen members of Congress for an investigation into the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline, which critics say has been tainted by a cozy relationship between the agency and the company that owns the pipeline.

Inspector General Harold Geisel told the legislators in a letter that he is initiating that investigation “to determine to what extent the Department and all other parties involved complied with federal laws and regulations relating to the Keystone XL pipeline permit process.”

The investigation will include interviews with State Department personnel and a review of communications between the agency and TransCanada, the owners of the pipeline. Environmentalists have alleged that the agency was acting as a cheerleader for the project rather than an objective factfinder, partly due to the fact that the company was represented by Paul Elliott, a deputy campaign manager for Sec. of State Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Michigan is notorious for the huge role that secret cash plays in elections, and the top item on the list of grievances and demands produced by Occupy Detroit is controlling money in politics.

In this state, outside (non-candidate) groups can spend unlimited amounts of money on “electioneering communications” that advocate for or against a candidate but don’t explicitly tell people how to vote, and those groups are not required to file campaign finance reports with the state.

The lack of reporting on the financing of issue ad represents a “gaping hole” in the Michigan‘s disclosure laws, according to the National Institute for Money in State Politics, which recently published a survey of state campaign finance laws.

The non-profit, non-partisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network gathers information about campaign-related ad buys from the public records of television stations that show which organizations paid for ads but don’t provide information about where that group got the money.

According to MCFN, secretly-funded television issue ads now make up the bulk of the election-related ads viewed by state voters.

Groups that are exempt from disclosure rules spent nearly $70 million on races for Michigan Supreme Court, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general over the last decade, MCFN found. In the general election last year 72% of TV advertising was undisclosed.

Last year’s state supreme court race featured $23 million dollars worth of secretly-financed advertising for and against candidates.

The top vote getter in the 2010 Michigan Supreme Court race was Third Circuit Judge Mary Beth Kelly who, according to MCFN, did not spend any of her own campaign money on TV ads but benefitted from millions in ads bought by the Michigan Republican Party and the Michigan Association of Realtors.

“Michigan has become a national symbol of special-interest pressure on our courts of law,” Bert Brandenburg, executive director of the Justice at Stake Campaign, a nonpartisan legal reform group said in a statement.

According to a report released last week by the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the Michigan Supreme Court race in 2010 was by far the most expensive in the nation.

According to that report, an advertising blitz that involved an estimated $6.8 to $8.8 million in non-candidate, disclosure-exempt funding helped elect Justice Mary Beth Kelly and reelect Justice Robert Young and tip the balance of the court back to a 4-3 conservative majority.

Most of the special-interest spending in Michigan was concealed from the public, a fact that accounts for the variation in estimates of total spending. Although ads by both parties and the [Law Enforcement Alliance of America] LEAA were blatant attempts to sway votes, Michigan’s outdated disclosure law treated them as apolitical “issue ads,” and required no campaign finance filings disclosing the amounts spent. Estimates of total spending therefore were largely based on the volume of TV ads each group ran, and estimates of what that airtime cost.

It also was impossible to decipher who ultimately bankrolled independent efforts in Michigan. After being the preeminent player in the previous five supreme court campaigns, the state Chamber of Commerce sponsored no television advertisements in 2010. But it did give $5.4 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), a national campaign organization. The RGA ultimately transferred $5.2 million back to Michigan’s Republican Party, which was the leading television sponsor in this year’s high court campaign. Accountability was lost in the face of the RGA’s massive national shell game.

While secret funding of any political campaign is problematic — particularly as elected officials advance privatization and business tax cuts as solutions to the state’s budget problems — secret funding of judicial races is seen as especially troublesome and there are signs that there is broad support for campaign finance reform, especially when it comes to judicial races.

In addition to the Occupy Wall St. movement, some the of the state’s largest papers have editorialized in favor of requiring disclosure.

A 20/20 Insight LLC poll conducted this month found that 96 percent of respondents believe that campaign contributions can influence a judge’s decision, and 93 percent said that judges should not hear cases involving a major contributor. 84 percent supported requiring that all contributions to a judges campaign be quickly disclosed and posted to a web site. 66 percent said they believe that there are two systems of justice in the U.S. — one for the rich and powerful and another for everyone else.

Cleaning up Michigan’s elections could be achieved through some simple reforms, according to MCFN. All that’s needed is for the legislature to amend the Michigan Campaign Finance Act so that it includes electioneering communications.

Electioneering communications should be defined to include any broadcast, cable, Internet or telephonic communication that features the name or image of a candidate for state or local office within 60 days of an election involving that candidate. Any committee or corporation that sponsors electioneering communications must disclose the donors whose funds the sponsor is aggregating to pay for its communications. Any committee or corporation that is a contributor to a sponsor of electioneering communications, or a contributor to a contributor, must, in turn, report its donors. No allowance can be given for the “Russian doll” strategy of hiding donors inside shells.

A package of election reforms introduced in the Republican-controlled legislature this month requires more reporting from candidate committees and ballot initiative committees but doesn’t address disclosure for issue ads at all.

As political will for a change in campaign financing mounts, it remains to be seen whether legislators respond to the pressure. Michigan Campaign Finance Network executive director Rich Robinson says such a move could change the business of politics quickly.

“I believe some mega-donors would quit the game if they wouldn’t have anonymity,” he said. “I think other donors’ support would be a liability. Who wants to be known as the drone carrying water for David Koch?”

Bundlers are individuals connected to a political candidate who offer to collect money on the candidate’s behalf and then ‘bundle it’ together. They are usually the largest contributors to candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Campaigns are not required to disclose their bundlers, and in fact, none of the Republican candidates have publicly named their donors who are giving money on behalf of other contributors. President Obama has elected to disclose his bundlers.

“When you release this level of information, it invites scrutiny, and the campaigns are shy about letting the public see the influence peddling that goes on behind the scenes,” said Michael Beckel, spokesman for The Center for Responsive Politics. “We know that there are perks and incentives involved for bundlers. This can be as small as being able to have a face-to-face conversation with a candidate at an event, or you might end up with an ambasadorial appointment abroad.”

According to iWatch news, this is a departure from the 2008 presidential campaign, when all the major candidates released their bundler information.

President Obama received at least $55 million this year from his bundlers, and more than 40 bundlers each brought in over $500,000. The minimum donation from a bundler is $50,000.

In contrast, individual donations for the campaign averaged $56 per person. According to Obama for America, more than 606,027 people have donated individually.

Bundlers are just one part of a growing trend of organizations and individuals contributing to political campaigns on behalf of donors that prefer anonymity. Other organizations that fall under the 501(c) tax code, like Americans for Prosperity, co-founded by the infamous billionaire David Koch, are not held to any disclosure rules as long as their primary purpose isn’t political.

Highland Park is a small city that is surrounded by the city of Detroit.

Detroit News reports that 14,000 light poles have been removed and locals are complaining that schools and businesses have been targeted by burglars since the city went dark.

[DTE Spokesman Len Singer] said the utility is under no obligation to maintain service to communities that don’t pay their bills. “But obviously, we wanted to work with the city to provide some lighting for their residents and businesses,” he said.

DTE began removing the light poles in August, rather than just cutting off the power, to avoid lawsuits and confusion, he said.

“Mostly, it was a liability issue; we didn’t want to have poles there that were de-energized, and likely won’t ever be energized again,” Singer said. “Also, we wanted to avoid the confusion of having lights up that don’t work. In the end, we figured it was better to just take them out.”

Some cities own their street poles and pay DTE for the electricity. “But we own the lights in Highland Park,” Singer said.

Highland Park is having a hard time paying for other services, too.

The state Treasury Department recently ordered a review of the finances of the city’s school system, a step that could lead to a takeover of the schools, as has already happened in Detroit.

Under Michigan’s contested Emergency Manager law the governor can appoint people to take over financially-troubled local governments and schools and fire elected officials, break contracts, privatize services or even dissolve municipalities.

In a letter to Obama, the groups argue that the recent revelations that the State Department was working directly with pipeline owner TransCanada to ensure the project’s approval rather than evaluating the application show that the State Department is biased and incapable of being objective.

We are deeply concerned about recently released emails that add to existing indications that your State Department has abdicated its responsibility to evaluate the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline in an impartial way…

The information contained in the emails is of particular concern given the already existing evidence that the State

Department has not taken seriously its obligation to impartially evaluate the impacts that this pipeline would have on the environment. Last fall, Secretary of State Clinton said she was “inclined” to recommend that you approve a permit for the pipeline, prejudging the environmental review for which her agency was responsible. And in June, the Los Angeles Times reported that documents obtained via WikiLeaks indicate then-State Department employee Goldwyn “alleviated” Canadian officials’ concern that pipeline approval was at risk, and that Goldwyn had provided “messaging” advice to the Canadians to help them undertake a public relations effort that could help with pipeline approval.

Mr. President, given this substantial evidence of pro-industry bias within your administration – evidence that the State

Department was acting in partnership with the oil industry and Canadian government to secure pipeline approval prior to conducting an environmental review – it would be irresponsible for you to follow the State Department’s guidance as you make your determination about whether the pipeline is in the national interest.

Mr. President, when you ran for office, you inspired millions with your call to “change the way that Washington” works by curbing the influence of lobbyists and corporate cash. During your campaign you said, “I am running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over.” It is not too late to live up to your promises. Reject this oil lobby influence and ignore the State Department’s biased conclusions. Consider independent experts’ analyses instead.

A final decision on the project is expected before the end of the year.

Friends of the Earth filed a federal lawsuit after the State Department denied their Freedom of Information Act request for emails that went back and forth between that agency and Paul Elliott, a former deputy campaign manager for Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and now chief lobbyist for TransCanada.

FOE says those emails show that “officials at the State Department provided information about the agency’s internal thinking and coached TransCanada on what to say during the legally mandated environmental review process.”

The most troubling documents indicate that State Department officials sought to help TransCanada by providing information about State’s internal thinking and by coaching TransCanada on what to say as it responded to a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the oil company’s controversial tar sands pipeline…

In an email exchange from May 19, 2010, Elliott told Nora Toiv (a former campaign colleague who had become special assistant to Secretary Clinton’s chief of staff) that then-State Department Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs David Goldwyn gave TransCanada’s then-president and CEO Hal Kvisle “insight on what he’d like to see by way of on the record comment during this public comment period of this Keystone KXL draft environmental impact statement.” Elliott wrote: “We are working with our stakeholders, shippers and vendors to deliver on the insight David shared with us and to do so by the June 15 deadline.”

The State Department is set to decide on whether to approve the project in the next couple months.

“As the results of Clearspending show, the U.S. continues to lack genuine accountability for government spending,” said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. “Spending accountability, data accuracy and independent review will help correct the vast misreporting.”

An Obama administration executive order in response to their earlier findings called for a board to enforce strong federal spending transparency, and the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act) was introduced in the U.S. House this summer to establish a similar independent tracking body. Neither plan has come to fruition yet.

“Although we’ve seen improvements in the past year, the truth is we cannot fully account for how the federal government spends about $1.3 trillion,” Miller continued. “That’s no negligible amount, especially when you compare it to the ‘Super Committee’s’ task of finding $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts.”

The data inaccuracies that caused the $1.3 trillion in misreported funds account for 94.5 percent of all the grant spending data reported in the fiscal year 2008 through 2010, showing only a one percent decrease from misreported funds in 2008.

“The idea that we are saving money using outside contractors is not backed up by the evidence,” Phil Thompson, executive vice president of SEIU Local 517M, said in a statement. “We need to seriously look at whether our taxpayers are truly getting real value when it comes to the hundreds of millions the state spends on private contracts.”

This week the Project on Government Oversight published a report that detailed how the federal government is wasting billions by paying contractors for work that could be done for less by state employees.

Unions that represent state workers say that the federal findings are consistent with information they’ve gathered about the costs of outsourcing by the state of Michigan.

The New Solutions for Michigan, report released by public employee groups in May, suggested that $100 million could be raised if the state required contractors to share in the belt-tightening by reducing their prices by 10 percent.

In a release Thursday the union groups said the the POGO study should prompt Snyder to focus on finding savings in state contracts.

Snyder’s office has not responded to multiple requests for information about oversight of contractors.