Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Being Bold - 11.25.09

Democrat Alma Wheeler Smith is running for governor on an unusual platform. She wants to raise taxes. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks that might not be as politically crazy as it sounds.

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Politicians these days survive bankruptcy, extramarital affairs, and drug and alcohol problems. What they seem to fear the most, however, is that someone will accuse them of raising taxes. Never mind if the highways are falling apart, we can’t educate our kids, and we just broke a promise to help a hundred thousand Michigan college students with their tuition. We can’t raise taxes.

That’s the position of Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, for example.

However, now comes State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, herself a former state senator. She’s running for governor.

And she has an amazing platform. She wants to raise taxes -- a lot. Raise them on a few of us, that is. She would lower them on commerce, by getting rid of the stupid surcharge on the Michigan Business Tax. She would lower the state sales tax, but sensibly extend it to include services in our service-based economy.

Most of all, she would campaign for a state constitutional amendment to allow a graduated income tax.

Essentially she is an intellectual heir of the famous U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. She’s an African-American woman and a Democrat. He was a white Republican who has been dead for seventy-five years. However, he once famously said “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

Alma Wheeler Smith believes that too. She didn’t always live in a civilized society. She was born in South Carolina. Her twin sister died as a baby, after she was horribly burned and an ambulance crew wouldn’t help her because she was black. The family moved to Michigan, where her father became Ann Arbor’s first black mayor.

His daughter has served in Lansing for many years, and understands state finances. Overall, her plan would raise $6.5 billion dollars, and devote most of it to education, which she sees as Michigan’s hope for the future.

Much of the new revenue would come from a graduated income tax, if she can persuade voters to amend the constitution so we can have one. Currently, we all pay a rate of 4.35 percent. You, me, the convenience store clerk and the state’s richest man.

We all pay the same. Smith wants brackets instead. Those making $45,000 a year or less would pay four percent. Those making up to sixty thousand would pay seven percent.

Beyond that, we’d pay 9.75 percent.

That’s more than double what top earners pay now. But she doesn’t mince words. “These are the people who can afford to pay a little bit more,” she told the Gongwer news service yesterday.

In fact, those paying more would pay less than it seems, because they could claim a federal tax credit. But how does she think she could get people to approve what is still a sizable tax increase?

Actually, she thinks there is a bigger chance of getting support for a larger tax hike than a smaller one. “Citizens are tired of the nickel and dime approach,” she said. They know we have big problems, and need big solutions.

Now, you may think this crazy, but this reminds me of the day John Engler was sworn in as governor. Old George Romney grasped his hand. “Be bold,” he told the younger man.

Engler was bold. He did things everybody said were impossible, and was re-elected twice by landslides. Maybe what voters really want most are leaders who are truly willing to lead.

Essay: Facing Reality - 11.23.09

The University of Michigan’s annual economic forecast got plenty of attention last week for its job loss predictions. But Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says the real news from the seminar was largely overlooked.

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The University of Michigan unveiled its annual economic forecast for the state last week, and, as always, it got significant media coverage. What bothered me is that most of what I heard or read seemed to miss the real story.

Newspapers tended to start by reporting the economists’ prediction that the state would suffer two more years of job losses. But then they quickly followed by saying that the good news was, to quote the Detroit Free Press, “the worst is over.”

That’s based on the economists’ projections that the pace of job losses is expected to slow - not stop, but slow. They think Michigan will lose only 85,000 jobs next year and a mere 36,000 in 2011. How does someone count that as good news?

By comparing those numbers to those of this absolutely terrible year, when job losses are expected to be almost 300,000.

That’s what passes for good news these days. What was remarkable was that hardly anybody looked back on what the U of M economists said last year. Last year’s predictions turned out to be ridiculously optimistic. They then forecast we would lose only about a third as many jobs this year as we actually did.

The University of Michigan economists also predicted last year that unemployment wouldn’t get much higher than 11 percent, and that Michigan would be adding jobs again by 2011.

I was baffled by those numbers at the time. That was at a point when it wasn’t clear if any of the auto companies would survive.

This year’s forecast looks much more soberly realistic. Though any predictions today about the economy in 2011 are apt to be about as reliable as predictions about that year’s Kentucky Derby.

If you want the broader truth about Michigan’s economy, however, a lot of it did come out in this forecast, mainly stuff the papers didn’t report. Basically, the seminar demonstrated that the way of life we’ve enjoyed for decades is over, and isn’t coming back.

Here’s an example: Thirty years ago, General Motors had 249,000 blue-collar line workers making a good living at auto plants across this state.

When the current round of downsizing ends, the total number of GM workers in Michigan will be 21,300. More than ninety percent of all those jobs have been eliminated, most likely forever.

Last year, for the first time in history, Ford, Chrysler and GM accounted for less than half of all cars sold in the nation. Two years from now, their share is expected to be less than forty percent.

The economists don’t think unemployment will rise much higher, but they do agree state revenues will continue to shrink, meaning at least two more years of huge budget deficits.

Finally, George Fulton, the director of the research seminar which produces the forecast, was asked when Michigan’s employment picture would be more like the rest of the nation’s. “One of the rating agencies said it would take thirty years,“ he said.

He then added that he thought that was optimistic. But there is something positive we can take away from all this. The muscle and manufacturing based economy we were born into is essentially over. Nobody is going to give us something to replace it. We have to invent a new Michigan future, on our own. So let‘s get busy, and decide where to start.

Essay: Getting It Done - 11.20.09

The legislature is still in session, and U of M's annual economic forecast indicates we've got more hard times ahead. Senior Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has a suggestion as to how we might get beyond this.

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Here's the good news. Just in case you didn't think your legislature could get anything done, it is now against the law for the state to produce or distribute any map, drawing, or graphic image of Michigan that leaves off the Upper Peninsula.

No stylized hand logos, no cute little mitten images, nothing. Leave off the UP and you are in BT. Big Trouble, that is. The governor signed that bill into law yesterday, and when I heard that, I immediately gave thanks that my kindergarten teacher is no longer living. If my memory is correct, one of the first things she taught us to do was put our little hands on a piece of paper and trace them.

"See, you've made a map of Michigan," Mrs. Hunter told us. That was enough to convince me that our state was somehow special, a feeling that has stayed with me ever since.

By the way, the governor also signed a law allowing pharmacists to fill prescriptions which out-of-state doctors send them by e-mail. She signed another bill that lets funeral directors off the hook if somebody never shows up to claim cremated remains, and a companion law that said we need to keep a record of these ashes.

And she signed a couple other even more obscure bills. So, it isn't quite correct to say that your lawmakers can't get anything done. They just can't manage the really important stuff, like balancing the budget and coming up with a way to fund education.

They are going to have to work harder at the hard stuff, though. That's the conclusion you'd have to draw if you paid attention to the University of Michigan's annual economic forecast, which was revealed yesterday. In a sense, the news was better than last year's, when the atmosphere might have best been described as controlled panic. The forecasters then urged the federal government to act swiftly to prevent a Great Depression-like collapse.

Yesterday, they said the worst has been avoided. "We were spared another depression, but still had to weather the period that has been dubbed the Great Recession," economist Joan Crary said. And while the recession is technically over, the aftereffects are going to be with us for years, the economists said.

In fact, what's going on now is indeed reminiscent of the Great Depression in some ways. That downturn also lingered for years. Prices went down during the depression, and last year, for the first time in more than half a century, we had deflation, not inflation. The Consumer Price Index actually fell by a third of one percent.

And now, as then, even consumers who have some disposable income are reluctant to spend it, because they fear something might happen to plunge them into financial disaster.

That may be prudent, but economists who just a few years ago worried about the inflationary effects of too much spending, now want the consumer to get out and spend and boost the economy.

They especially need to spend in Michigan. So I have a suggestion for our lawmakers. Go back to work and pass another law requiring all of us to buy a few of the new maps that have to show both peninsulas, and maybe a box of Michigan coasters too.

You'll be able to show your Wolverine pride, and help out our state. And what could possibly be better than that?

Essay: Rearranging the Deck Chairs - 11.19.09

Governor Granholm is asking students to pressure state lawmakers to restore funding to the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks we need to focus on the long-term problem of school funding…

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Michigan is in a profound financial crisis, and the way state government takes in and spends money is deeply flawed.

Those are statements to which probably everyone would agree.

Much as people on the Titanic would have agreed, on that long-ago April night, that their ship was in trouble. The question then is, once you know what’s wrong, what do you do about it?

The right answer, for those in charge of the Titanic, would have been A) see if you can save the ship, and B) meanwhile, figure out how to save as many as possible of the people on board.

The wrong answer would have been to worry about somebody stealing the spoons. In the case of the Titanic, conditions turned into a chaotic mess after the ocean liner hit the iceberg. In the end, more than two-thirds of the passengers died.

Michigan’s crisis is still ongoing, and is certain to affect more people. Ten million, rather than twenty-two hundred.

What should be clear to everyone is that our leaders owe it to us to do the best they can to get the state through the short term.

That includes both the state’s neediest citizens, as well as its greatest institutions. We especially have to make sure, like our good farmer ancestors, that we don’t eat up our seed corn. Meaning that we don’t destroy our young people’s chance for a future.

But what’s just as important is that our leaders develop a plan to address our long-term needs and problems.

What’s tragically clear is that they aren’t doing either. The ship’s going down, and they are rearranging the deck chairs.

Yesterday, for example, the House Appropriations Committee dithered over a proposal to fund school bus inspections by transferring money from the state police crime labs. The current budget actually eliminated all money for school bus inspections.

Not inspecting the buses sounds like an invitation to sue the state. But then a bunch of sheriffs complained about losing crime lab money, and the committee chair abruptly adjourned the hearing without explanation. When the going gets tough, run and hide.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm was at Michigan State, trying to get the students mad at the legislature for eliminating the Michigan Promise scholarship program. Earlier, she sent a letter to same effect to 348,000 high school and college students.

However, only a hundred or so showed up at her rally. The rest may have been smart enough to know the horse is out of the barn. The state senate is not going to take this up again this year.

If I had been one of those students, I would have asked the governor, “where were you when it mattered? Why weren’t you here before they passed the budget - which, by the way, you signed?“

Meanwhile, MSU President Lou Anna Simon actually did something. She announced the school will use federal stimulus money to restore some of what eight thousand MSU students would have gotten from the promise grant.

She added, however, that this was only a temporary, one-time solution. What should be clear is this: Michigan’s leaders need to forget about symbolism and slogans.

They need to come up with a long-term plan to fund our state’s essential needs in this time of economic change. The tragedy is that nobody in Lansing seems to be doing that.

And the last of the lifeboats are just about gone.

Essay: China Daze - 11.18.09

President Obama has just left China… and an increasing number of Michigan leaders have been making trips to that country in an aim to boost trade. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look behind the scenes.

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Here’s a little quiz for you: What do President Obama, Michigan Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, and House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer have in common? I’ll give you a hint.

It’s something our governor doesn’t share. Any idea what I am talking about? Here’s the answer. The first three men have been to China, in search of economic advantages for our state and nation.

But our governor has not. To quote Tom Watkins, a former state superintendent of schools and a fellow Democrat, “Gov. Jennifer Granholm still not made a trade mission to China in her nearly seven years in office.” What’s worse, Watkins adds in a recent newspaper commentary, she continues to spout political rhetoric bashing China.

Now, it needs to be said that Watkins has no reason to feel kindly towards Granholm. A few years ago, she forced him out of his job as state superintendent, a job he very much wanted to keep. He isn’t exactly an unbiased observer.

Yet there is plenty of evidence that his criticism of the governor‘s lack of a China policy is accurate.

Indeed, he is far from the only one who finds the governor’s failure to court the world’s largest emerging market baffling. The governor is hardly a stay-at-home type.

She’s constantly globe-trotting in search of new jobs, and claims to have brought nearly 11,000 of them to Michigan since she took office.

That was her fourth trip to Japan, which has less than one-tenth China’s population.

Earlier this week, veteran Lansing correspondent Tim Skubick asked why our “go anywhere, anytime, governor” hasn’t exploited China’s potential for jobs.

“You remember China, the place that makes everything we buy over here? “ Skubick asked, adding “It is a market to be exploited.”

So, why aren’t we trying to do that? Well, as both Watkins and Skubick point out, the governor has been very successful at making political points by bashing China. Three years ago, she repeatedly accused her opponent, Dick DeVos, of shipping Michigan jobs off to China. That’s something the experts agree that this isn’t helpful to Michigan’s long-term economic interests.

In fact, the governor got complaints about this from her own Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

But the governor continues to beat the anti-China drum. During an August fundraiser for Lt. Gov. John Cherry, her chosen successor, she asked “Do we want to be a place where the unemployed suffer while we watch our jobs shipped off on a slow boat to China?”

That isn’t helpful. As Watkins notes, “this type of rhetoric not only fails to create a single Michigan job,” it makes it harder to even begin to do so. Other Michigan leaders have been smarter about this.

Both Wayne and Oakland counties have set up permanent offices in China. Legislative leaders have begun to go there as well. Solid business partnerships in Asia require building relationships.

We haven’t done that. The state does have an office in China - but it is run out of Lansing by a man who told Skubick, “It’s not a top priority.” Even high school students know that China is the world’s biggest and fastest-growing economic superpower.

Michigan is the place most in need of new jobs and industries.

Figuring out our priorities here shouldn’t be that hard.

Essay: Psychoceramics - 11.11.09

This year’s budget was finally passed… but the governor has been urging a last-minute revenue increase to replace cuts to the public schools. Republicans, however, are refusing to consider it. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry looks at what’s really going on.

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If you have been listening to what I’ve been saying about the state budget crisis, you know that I have been sharply critical of the governor for failing to show more leadership.

Well, the blame, in my view, has shifted. Governor Granholm is finally trying to do something to help save our kids’ education, at least in the short-term. But Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop refuses to compromise or even negotiate.

Some tell me he is doing this for narrow, ideological reasons. Others say his stand is merely a cynical ploy to appeal to the hard right, to bolster his drive to win the Republican nomination for attorney general next year. My guess is that it is both.

What I know, however, is that those who are going to suffer if he succeeds are not Democrats or Republicans, but the one group of Michiganders who least deserve to be punished for the politicians’ failings: Michigan’s schoolchildren.

Last month, in an effort to close a nearly three billion dollar budget deficit, the legislature cut the amount we spend to educate our students by $165 dollars a child.

But the governor then announced the shortfall was even greater than she had thought, and cut aid to education again - twice. For years, the legislature has made a special appropriation for those districts that voluntarily spent more to educate their kids before 1994.

That‘s the year in which Proposal A shifted most of that responsibility from local communities to the state. The governor cut that appropriation, and then cut all the schools again.

This means that every school district in the state is now getting between $292 and $600 less per child than last year. This is bound to have a devastating effect. When the governor announced those cuts, she was immediately attacked by Mike Bishop. He said it was a clumsy and cynical attempt to get him to agree to a tax increase.

He may have been right. But the money just wasn’t there. The governor could, instead, have destroyed the state’s entire network of agricultural extension programs, though that alone wouldn’t have saved enough. Or she could have crippled higher education, something that yet may happen.

Now, however, she is doing what she should do: Imploring the citizens to urge the legislature to fix this problem. The House of Representatives tried to do so in the most painless way possible. They voted to use the last of the stimulus money to help the schools. Bishop won’t even let the senate vote on this.

Now, the governor is asking the public to urge “narrowly targeted” revenue increases.

In an astonishing display of cynicism, possibly mingled with fear, Bishop called on her yesterday to stop it. “As a leader of this state, she has a responsibility to bring calm and stability to the state,“ he said.

Sorry, senator, you are completely wrong, and I think you know it. She has an obligation to tell us when we’ve set fire to our own house, which is what our lawmakers have done. Without well-educated children, Michigan can have no prosperous future.

The governor said something else yesterday. She said the legislature seems to care more about the oil and tobacco industries than they do our schools. If that isn‘t so, senator, you need to do something to prove it, and the time for that is now.

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.