Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Roads in Ruin - 11.10.09

A major new study shows that the state’s roads are rapidly falling apart. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what’s going on…

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Here’s something that shouldn’t surprise you. Michigan roads are in bad shape, and getting worse, with little relief in sight.

Virtually everyone who has been driving in this state has some personal bad road tale to tell. Mine involves a pothole the size of Salt Lake City on the Lodge Freeway a few years ago.

I donated one of my car’s front wheels to the pothole gods there after teaching a night class one freezing February evening.

Fortunately, I was rescued by a nice young couple. As they attempted to extricate my car, some of the folks from the neighborhood offered to sell us crack.

We said no, for a number of reasons, some of which were related to the notion that committing a felony is a bad idea.

But when I look at some of the decisions our lawmakers are making, I sometimes wonder whether a number of our elected officials may have been among the drug sellers’ best customers.

For our roads are deteriorating at an accelerating pace, according to a major new study by the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association, known as MITA.

While the Detroit area has the greatest number of miles of bad road, many outstate counties have a higher percentage of roads in poor condition. Oceana County, on the Lake Michigan shore, is the worst. There are townships in the UP where 100 percent of the roads eligible for federal funding are in poor shape.

Letting our roads fall apart is one of the dumbest things we could do, if we are in fact serious about trying to revive our economy. Nobody’s going to want to relocate businesses and jobs here if the roads look terrible, and driving to the store puts your axles at risk. What’s more, our state doesn’t even have to pay the full amount needed to restore and repair many of our stricken roadways.

That’s because federal matching funds are available to fix more than seventeen thousand miles of Michigan roads. By not putting up some of the money to fix them, we’re losing lots more.

According to MDOT, the Michigan Department of Transportation, we will lose more than half a billion in federal road funding money in 2011 unless we come up with $84 million in new matching funds. Not coming up with that would be insane, since for every new dollar we spend, that state would get back six bucks.

MITA found that the percentage of Michigan roads in poor shape rose from just over a quarter of all roads two years ago, to nearly one-third of all roads last year. And the situation is getting worse, because the state isn’t spending the money to do the necessary maintenance on the roads now in better shape.

Part of what’s happening is the economy, of course. Most of the money to fix the roads comes from the gas tax and new vehicle registrations. These days, we are driving less and buying fewer cars.

So there is less to keep the roads rolling. Granted, there is never going to be enough money to do everything we want to do.

But without decent roads, we are driving ourselves into oblivion. Common sense means that overhauling the way we fund road repair should be a top priority in Lansing.

Unfortunately, in politics common sense seems to be a most uncommon thing.

Essay: One Cheer for the Governor - 11.6.09

The state House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday that would use the remaining federal stimulus money to restore some of the cuts to public schools… However, it may not pass the senate. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what’s going on...

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For some time now it has been clear that there won’t be a penny of the federal stimulus money left for next year’s budget. A few months ago, the politicians in Lansing were talking as if there would be a billion bucks left to help them with the next deficit.

Know how much is left now? Near as I can tell, a mere $184 million, and that is bound to be tossed at some portion of the ever-growing gap in this year’s budget before many more weeks go by.

With that in mind, the state of house of representatives passed a very sensible bill yesterday, HB 4860, which the governor correctly embraced and said she would sign. The bill would use the last of the stimulus cash to replace the money the governor eliminated a couple of weeks ago, when revenues once again were lower than expected.

The bill also provides some, though not enough, money for school bus inspections. Most people don’t realize this, but in its zeal to balance the current budget without raising taxes, the legislature entirely eliminated any funding for school bus inspections.

I hope someone exposes who was the genius behind that if some bus’s brakes ever fail. Anyway, this bill would put about $800,000, a little more than half the inspection money back.

The bill also would restore the additional funding the governor cut from the so-called high-spending districts, some of which have lost as much as $600 a student. However, the house is on a little shakier ground here. The bill specifies that the $52 million the governor cut would be restored from the Michigan Future Fund.

That would be fine with me, except for one thing. There isn’t any money in the Michigan Future fund. We should find it some.

For if this state is to have a future, it depends on properly educating our kids. We might as well use the last of the stimulus money for that purpose, before somebody decides to spend it on landscaping the new state police headquarters, or something.

But in an astounding bit of ideological blockheadedness, the Republicans in the state senate are apparently opposed to this.

Matt Marsden, the mouthpiece for Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, called the proposal to spend this money on the schools “absolutely ridiculous.“ This is a bit strange, since his boss was loudly criticizing the governor a few days ago for making these cuts in the first place. Marsden said the house has $100 million from the Earned Income Tax Credit freeze bill that the Democrats refused to use.

That’s a bit like saying a hungry man should go get a sandwich in the middle of a minefield. That money would come from the state’s poorest taxpayers, and would be available only if the governor agrees to cut the business tax in a way certain to drive up the deficit.

Michelle Pugh, a parent of three kids in Utica, understands what’s at stake better than the lawmakers. “This is not right,“ she told the Detroit News yesterday. “This is about our kids.”

She said the legislature needs to get it together so that they don’t do further damage to our classrooms.

If I were her, I might consider letting my friendly local state senator know directly, and exactly, what I think.

Essay: Political Courage - 11.5.09

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing romped to an easy re-election victory this week. But Senior Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry note that he did so even after taking some highly unpopular stands.

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Detroit Mayor Dave Bing used to be a record-setter when he was a major league basketball player, which is how us old-timers used to think of him. But he set a political record this year that's unlikely to be equaled. He won four elections for mayor in the space of nine months. That's a result of Detroit's nutty city charter, which is now, thankfully, about to be rewritten.

The charter required a special election to fill the last few months of the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick's term. So Bing had to win a primary in February and a general election in May.

Then he had to win another primary in August and a general election this week. This time, however, the term lasts four years. I hope the mayor doesn't have withdrawal symptoms when he doesn't have to face another election in three months.

But despite all that campaigning, the new mayor found the courage and the will to do something risky.

He took a stand he knew would be unpopular, because he figured it was hugely important. He stood up to entrenched interests and unions and lost support as a result. Yet he still won big.

And he can now say he has a legitimate mandate for his policies. Now, he was lucky in that it was far easier for him to do this than it would have been for most politicians.

Mayor Bing's toughest election battles occurred not in the general election, but the special one last winter and spring. After he knocked off acting mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. and Freman Hendrix, a longtime political heavyweight, the major leaguers backed off.

That meant the closest thing to a serious challenger he had was a man named Tom Barrow, who had been the candidate of reform when he ran for mayor twenty years ago. He lost twice, however, to the legendary Coleman Young.

Then things turned sour for him, and Barrow, who is an accountant, ended up going to prison for tax evasion and bank fraud, something you normally might not want on your mayor's resume.

In the August primary, Bing clobbered him by 74 percent to 11 percent. The election seemed to be over. Many politicians in Bing's place would have then run a safe campaign praising apple pie and motherhood. But instead, he took on the tough issues.

Detroit has horrendous financial problems. Some of these stem from the fact that it has a public workforce designed for a prosperous city of two million people. Today, it is an impoverished city with maybe eight hundred thousand left. Bing took on the municipal unions,

He demanded salary cuts and other concessions, because the city just isn't able to pay the way it once did. In retaliation, the unions threw their support behind Tom Barrow. They poured money into his campaign. But the voters, to their credit, turned out to be grownups. Barrow drastically improved his primary showing, but not enough.

Instead of losing 74 percent to 11 percent, he lost 58 to 42. That still amounts to a landslide win for Mayor Bing.

Now the mayor is in amazingly strong shape. He really did win a mandate for change, and intends to use it. Here's hoping the next statewide leaders we elect are willing to do precisely the same.

Essay: Voting for Taxes - 11.4.09

A funny thing happened in yesterday’s elections. Voters in Detroit and elsewhere actually voted for higher taxes. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks he knows why…

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Here’ s something interesting you may have overlooked about yesterday’s elections. In Detroit, where unemployment is at Great Depression-era levels, the voters were asked to approve a half a billion dollar bond proposal for building new schools.

The city’s largest newspaper, the Detroit Free Press editorialized against the school bond proposal, saying there was no guarantee the money would be spent wisely.

You might have thought that was the end of that. After all, the one thing everybody seems to accept as a given is that raising taxes is the one thing you cannot ask voters to do.

That certainly is how the governor and the legislature think. For the last year, we have watched as Lansing made major cuts in important programs rather than ask us to pay for them.

And our lawmakers would clearly rather do anything rather than make the decision to raise taxes on their own.

But guess what. The voters of Detroit approved the half a billion for their schools, by almost a two to one margin. They willingly agreed to tax themselves until the year 2039 for this.

Even in their current, wretched state, Detroiters were willing to make sacrifices to take a chance on building a future. Now let me tell you about my little city, which is called Huntington Woods.

Huntington Woods is far better off than Detroit, but we have foreclosed houses all over the place, and people who have lost their jobs. Additionally, some of our roads need resurfacing.

We don’t have many giant potholes, but we have some rough surfaces and crumbling curbs. Our leaders asked us to tax ourselves by an extra seven and a half million dollars to fix the roads.

That’s a fair chunk of change, given that we have fewer than six thousand people. Guess what. Eighty-five percent of us voted for higher taxes. Now, if they had just put something on the ballot saying, “Would you like your taxes to be raised?” My guess is that ninety-five percent of us would have voted either no, or, “Hell, no.”

But when it was clear what the money was going to be spent for, we were willing to pony up. Maybe the politicians in Lansing ought to look at these results, and reconsider eliminating the Michigan Promise tuition scholarships. They are designed to help mostly middle-class Michigan kids aim at a brighter future.

Maybe the politicians in Lansing ought to consider giving us an alternative, before imposing crippling cuts on the public schools. They cut little Harper Woods by nearly $600 a student.

Thanks to the school funding system called Proposal A, Harper Woods voters aren’t allowed to tax themselves to make up that money, even if they want to. It seems to me that’s wrong.

If Detroiters can tax themselves to build schools, we should let people tax themselves to pay teachers. Detroiters are betting that if they build it, meaning better schools, students will come.

I am betting that if voters can see what their dollars are going for, and the expense is for something they want, they will be more than willing to pay more taxes.

That’s what we saw happening yesterday. I wonder if those in charge of our statewide interests, especially Dr. No himself, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, are paying attention.

Essay: Ford and the Future - 11.3.09

Rank-and-file union members at Ford overwhelmingly turned down a new round of contract concessions yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says we shouldn’t be all that surprised by the news…

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Ford Motor Company learned an ancient and painful lesson over the last week: You simply can’t have it both ways.

Throughout the crisis now gripping the auto industry, Ford has maintained, with increasing smugness, that it was different. Different from Chrysler and General Motors, in two significant ways.

Ford, alone among the once-big three, did not seek government loans, and did not declare bankruptcy. Near as I can tell, there were three reasons for this. Ford had borrowed up to the hilt in the private sector back when big corporations could still do so, before the Wall Street crash of September 2008.

Ford had shrewdly recruited Alan Mulally from Boeing, and this savvy executive helped set the House that Old Henry built on a turnaround path. And finally, Ford has, all things told, better cars right now than GM or especially Chrysler, which, when it comes to future product, is in ghastly shape, unless you want a Jeep.

Not only that, Ford surprised everyone by posting a nearly $1 billion dollar profit in the third quarter of this year - including a tiny profit in the place that really counts, North America.

The last time that happened was nearly five years ago, when George W. Bush had just started his second term.

So is it any wonder that, when asked to grant the company the same kind of concessions that GM and Chrysler got, Ford workers overwhelmingly said no? Frankly, I can’t blame them.

Today, most of the analysts are beating up on the rank-and-file United Auto Workers for turning this deal down. I don’t agree. Ford management asked for this in a couple of ways.

First, by trumpeting their success. Second, while Mulally is a business genius, he makes mistakes too. And one of the biggest was telling a congressional committee a year ago that there was nothing wrong with his $13.6 million compensation package.

“I think I am OK where I am,“ he said. Well, as Free Press business columnist Tom Walsh shrewdly observed, though Mulally later did take a big pay cut, Ford UAW workers think they are OK where they are too. Actually, they don’t think that.

They are very worried about the future. There were a hundred thousand Ford UAW workers the last time the company made a profit, back in 2005. There are exactly half that many now.

Ford workers have already taken two rounds of concessions. This time, they were being asked, among other things, to give up a union’s most powerful tool, the right to strike, for seven years, no matter what. Small wonder that three-quarters of the workers ignored their leaders’ advice and said no.

Ford now has to figure out how to cope with this. By the way, there is another way that the company is different from Chrysler and GM. It has to cope with an enormous burden of debt - $27 billion worth. Chrysler and GM shed most of their debt in bankruptcy court.

Henry Ford the First had a lot of wacky ideas, but I know this about him. He wouldn’t have gone bragging about how well he was doing, and then expected his workers to give him charity.

That’s a lesson Mulally and company might do well to heed.

Essay: Now For the Hard Part - 11.2.09

Governor Granholm and the state Legislature finally agreed on a budget last week… but it’s a document that no one seems happy with. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry looks at what it really means…

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On Friday, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed the final bills completing the long-overdue state budget. Then she put down her pen and said these rather bizarre words:

“This is the budget we have, but not the budget we need. It is a budget I don’t agree with and don’t support.” To which I wanted to say, What do you mean? You just signed it. You are responsible for this. And we now will suffer the consequences.

In a sense, the above, milder version, reminds me of one of history’s most infamous moments, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sold out Czechoslovakia for what he said would be “peace in our time.” Winston Churchill then growled, “England has been offered a choice between war and shame.”

“She has chosen shame. She will get war,” later. That is, of course, exactly what happened back in 1938. What our governor is apparently arguing in 2009 is this: She had to choose between signing a terrible budget and ruining the state.

But she has chosen to do both. With this budget our lawmakers have betrayed our hope for a better future. What we have witnessed is an absolute failure of political will and leadership.

Our state’s lawmakers have passed a budget that ignores the changing economy of Michigan, and our needs. In a world where our only hope is better education, our leaders have voted to make sure more public schools fail. In a world where higher education is Michigan’s only hope to again become competitive, and the younger generation’s only hope for a future, our lawmakers have betrayed a promise they made to help 96,000 students with college tuition.

But neither the governor nor the legislature made the faintest effort to move this state to a graduated income tax, that would assess the burdens of civilization according to our ability to pay.

Nobody seriously proposed taxing services, even though we have become a service-based economy. Nor did our lawmakers consider raising the state income tax by a few tenths of a percent, instead of cutting what we spend to educate our kids by as much as $600 a child. And they certainly never dreamed of raising the tax on a bottle of beer instead of cutting the promise grant or cutting payments to nursing homes that care for the poor and disabled.

By the way, the tax on beer hasn‘t been changed since they lowered it forty-three years ago. The beer industry is well served by its lobbyists. Better than we are by our legislators.

If this bothers you, you might consider getting vocal about it. You have now seen that you cannot depend on our leaders to act with your best interests in mind, and this is just the start.

Next year will be worse. We’ll have another huge budget deficit, but with a difference: We plugged half of this one with federal stimulus money. By next year, that all will be gone.

This budget, according to House Speaker Andy Dillon, was “child’s play,” compared to what we face next year. If you want schools and parks and roads and a future, you need to fight for them.

Civilization costs money, especially when times are tough.

But the alternative will cost us all far more.

Essay: Stem Cells Again - 10.29.09

Last year, Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing embryonic stem cell research. But, as Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry reports, some lawmakers in Lansing are now trying to change things…

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You might have thought the legislature would be entirely focused on trying to pass a budget these days. After all, they were constitutionally required to get it done four weeks ago, and they aren‘t finished yet. But if you thought that, you‘d be wrong.

Among other things, a group of lawmakers is working to reverse the will of the people and throw all sorts of roadblocks at embryonic stem cell research, which the voters approved last year.

They’ve introduced legislation in both the House and the Senate designed to prevent this enormously valuable work. Battle Creek physician and former Republican Congressman Joe Schwarz said it best: “They couldn’t stop it at the ballot box, so they are trying to stop it by throwing a regulatory banner at the research.”

Now, you can argue that embryonic stem cell research is highly controversial and that it should deserve careful consideration and vigorous debate, and you’d be right. We had that debate. We had a ferocious public battle and a statewide election on this less than a year ago. And the people decided.

Michigan citizens decisively voted last November to amend the state constitution to allow embryonic stem cell research. The measure passed by a quarter of a million votes. Despite a lot of misinformation, the facts are these:

Scientists are only allowed to use leftover embryos that are created in fertility clinics and then voluntarily donated. These are small clumps of cells that would otherwise be destroyed.

Incidentally, that amendment, combined with President Obama’s decision to lift the federal ban on funding such research, has been good for our state’s economy. The University of Michigan alone recently received $6.8 million in grants for this.

That means more research projects, and jobs.

However, a group of lawmakers in the House have sponsored a joint resolution calling for another constitutional amendment that would essentially repeal the one we passed last year.

They want an amendment saying that from the moment of fertilization, a cell is a person who has a right to life. This would, of course, end all stem cell research. Fortunately, that amendment isn’t going anywhere. What’s happening in the state senate is sneakier.

Tom George, a Republican from Kalamazoo, is trying to pass a package of “regulations” he says would “define and clarify” the rules for stem cell research. In fact, they would make such research virtually impossible, requiring, for example, that scientists determine whether an embryo had more than a fifty percent chance of surviving implantation before its cells could be used. Nobody can do that.

Sean Morrison, director of the U of M’s Center for Stem Cell Biology, testified that these bills “would impede the development of the life sciences sector by making it illegal to pursue mainstream forms of medical research widely accepted throughout the rest of the country.” What he didn’t say is that what Senator George is trying to do is also probably unconstitutional.

The amendment we passed says state law cannot restrict, obstruct, or discourage stem cell research.

The courts would probably throw these bills out. So here’s a suggestion. The people settled this issue last year. Senator George, you are a smart man. Why don’t you use your time and energy figuring out a way to adequately fund education in Michigan instead?

Essay: Trying to Fix Things - 10.28.09

Lawmakers in both Lansing and Detroit have been criticized this year for failing to get their jobs done. But, as Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry notes, Detroiters, at least, are trying to do something about it…

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Let’s give Detroiters credit for something. They are at least trying to fix their pathetic and dysfunctional system of government.

Over the past few years, the Motor City has been a national laughingstock. Not for the crime rate, racial problems, the bad schools or the terrible poverty that afflicts so many of its residents.

Instead, Detroit has been the shame of the nation in recent years thanks mainly to its elected leaders. First, there was Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a huge and hugely talented man. He talked a good game, but threw it all away to live the life of a flamboyant thug.

Kilpatrick is out of prison now and thankfully out of state, hopefully forever. But he did plenty of damage to a city that already had all the trouble it could handle.

Unfortunately, once he was gone, City Council stepped up to embarrass us further.

We had months of Monica Conyers, the wife of the House Judiciary Chairman, acting very much as you might expect a foul-mouthed teenager to act.

Unfortunately, she was then acting council president. She called her fellow council members names, indulged in openly racist behavior and name-calling, and generally acted like a clown.

Five months or so ago she resigned, when it turned out she was also taking bribes in parking lots. She is expected to be sentenced to prison on December 1st.

Unfortunately, Conyers has had plenty of company in discrediting the council in recent years. There was the councilman who got in trouble for putting his girl friend’s daughter on the city payroll, even though she never lived in Detroit.

He went to jail too. Another council member, known mostly for funny hats and incoherent nastiness, died just before she was to be served with a federal indictment which charged her, among other things, of trading a vote for 17 pounds of sausage.

So why have Detroiters kept electing people like this? Mostly because of the system. Motown is the only large city in the nation to elect all of its council members at large. Voters have to pick from a roster of more than 100 names, and naturally, they tend to go with names they know. Under those rules, Kate Gosselin would likely win a seat if she chose to run.

This summer, a band of mostly young people set out to change that. They pounded the pavement, collected signatures and got a proposal on next week’s ballot to switch to a system where most of council is elected by individual districts.

That would mean for the first time people in the neighborhoods could elect someone they know to fight for their own interests.

To be sure, arguments can be made against a district system. Yet the bottom line is that Detroiters are trying to fix their mess. As further proof, this spring they decided to elect a commission to rewrite their badly flawed city charter.

But meanwhile in Lansing, nothing has changed. Day after day, we’ve seen the appalling spectacle of inflexible and incompetent lawmakers who cannot even balance their budget.

Detroiters are trying to do something about their leadership failure. It might be time to ask what’s taking the rest of us so long.

Essay: Threatening Agriculture - 10.27.09

Michigan’ s agricultural extension programs have been helping the state’s farmers for nearly a century. Now, the program may be threatened with extinction. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry explains.

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Gov. Jennifer Granholm has not specifically said she will veto funding for agricultural extension programs, but she has been strongly hinting that she might do exactly that.

And it would be very hard to imagine anything worse that could come out of the dangerous game of chicken our so-called leaders have been playing for months with the state budget, and with us.

We aren’t talking about much money here. The network of Agricultural Extension programs and offices and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Stations get a paltry $64 million from the state. That compares to nearly two billion dollars Michigan taxpayers spend each year on prisons. But if the governor vetoes funding for agricultural programs, that will mean statewide devastation.

That‘s the word Jeffrey Armstrong uses to describe it. He‘s the dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. It would mean, for one thing, the loss of millions more in federal matching funds for our second biggest industry.

“The Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station system and MSU extension are providing the research, development, and education for Michigan’s emerging green economy,” Armstrong said.

If that funding is eliminated, or even if it is withheld, he says it would “destroy our ability to build the one economic sector in which Michigan has an advantage,” he says.

What that would mean is that MSU would have to shut down its 83 extension offices -- one per county - plus 15 agricultural and biological research stations and some other programs.

That would also mean a loss of nearly three thousand more jobs. Now, if you are a city dweller like me, you may think that what we are talking about here is a bunch of 4-H clubs.

Well, they do fund those clubs, which reach a lot of urban kids as well. But MSU’s agricultural extension programs are also helping the City of Detroit to convert brownfields into places that grow crops for energy production. They are helping seven thousand families eat better and assisting others with child care and breast feeding.

Extension programs have developed a method they say is close to wiping out the Emerald Ash Borer. In Macomb County, they’ve helped more than a hundred families avoid foreclosure.

That’s only a small sampling of what these programs do.

They have been run for a century by Michigan State, which was founded in 1855 to improve agriculture and help bring the benefits of what were called the “applied sciences” to everyone in our state. Now, Michigan is struggling to cope with a huge budget deficit.

The state still hasn’t finalized a budget that was supposed to have been done a month ago. Last week, the state unexpectedly withheld the October payment from the extension services. The governor’s office won’t say if she plans to kill the programs entirely.

Republicans were quick to denounce her for this, and just as quick to say they still won’t agree to new revenue, no matter what.

What is very clear is that destroying these programs will have a devastating effect on the common good. Last time I checked, that’s what those we elect to serve us are supposed to be looking after.

Something seems to have gone terribly wrong.

Essay: Longer View - 10.26.09

The current state budget crisis isn't over, but everybody agrees we'll have another one next year, and the year after that. Senior political analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders when we are going to get to the root of the problem.

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You may think you have heard enough about Michigan's state budget mess to last a lifetime. But here's something else you need to know. Virtually nobody is trying to do anything about the real problem. Now, if you've been following the news, you know the battles over this year's state budget are not yet over, almost a month after everything was legally supposed to be done.

While a government shutdown the day after Halloween is increasingly unlikely, it is still a possibility. But what is more troubling is that everybody in government knows this isn't a one-time crisis.

As Speaker of the House Andy Dillon tersely said last week, "Next year will be worse." So will every year after that, unless and until the squabbling bands of partisans in the legislature are willing to become statesmen, and address the deeper issue here.

What's really wrong is this. We are depending on a system designed in an era when automobiles and manufacturing were king. When workers did their jobs in one single location, and made high salaries for making stuff -- primarily, cars and car parts.

Everything in our economy was based on that.

That's all changed now. The auto industry has shrunken, and while it may survive, it employs far fewer people. In the future, automotive salaries are going to be smaller.

The parts of the economy that are growing, here and everywhere, are the so-called service sectors. But we don't tax services. If I buy a muffler, I pay sales tax on it. If I pay you to install it on my car, you don't pay a penny in tax on that money.

Incredibly, however, few are talking much about a needed major overhaul of the way the government works. Yesterday, I talked to one man who is. Tom Watkins has never been in the legislature, but spent years dealing with the system as state superintendent of schools.

"Those who think we can simply cut or tax our way out of these budget problems are delusional. It is change-or-die time for Michigan," Watkins said. Here's what he suggests.

To close the deficit and avoid doing horrendous harm to our future, the legislature should agree to a temporary tax increase that would be phased out completely in two or three years.

Then, they look at who, how, and what we tax.

And move towards these other long-term reforms:

First, enact a single health care plan for all government workers, much like the one Speaker Dillon has suggested.

Next, come up with a rational process for consolidating many of our smaller school districts and combining local government services.

Change pension plans from a system of defined benefits to one based on contributions. These much-needed changes will save vast amounts of money. "Then," Watkins said, "if these reforms don't get done in time, major cuts kick in and the lawmakers and the people who elected them have no one to blame but themselves."

He says our lawmakers in Lansing need to be asked: Which side are they on? Will they keep fighting for the dying status quo?

Or will they stand up for the collective future of our state?

Everything depends on whether they, and we, answer that question in the right way.