Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Nightmare Scenario - 5/14/2008

Imagine this: It is mid-October and the electoral math is starting to gel. Barack Obama and John McCain are locked in a close race.

Most of the states are breaking along familiar lines, but the economy has given the Democrats a boost in a few formerly red states. But to seal the deal, Obama needs to carry Michigan.

That hasn’t been a problem for a Democrat in recent years, so long as they get a big turnout in Detroit, and stay competitive in the suburbs. But this year, Detroit means Kwame Kilpatrick.

Polls show the mayor has a near-universal negative rating in the suburbs. Republicans have been working the Kwame issue as hard as possible, crafting appeals that range from the sublime to the openly racist. The Internet is flooded with cleverly altered pictures that seem to show Obama and Kilpatrick together, wearing dashikis.

“Soul Brothers,“ one caption reads. Posters appear: “If you like having a black mayor, you’ll love having a black President.”

Naturally, the Republicans deny responsibility for them, but they are having an effect. Then, his trial approaching, an increasingly desperate Mayor wants to meet with the Democratic presidential candidate. Obama would rather appear holding a chunk of raw plutonium. But there is a veiled threat behind that request.

Meet with me, or the turnout in Detroit may not be as large as you need or want. Obama knows that without Michigan, he may not be able to win the presidency. He also knows that he can kiss white votes good-bye, in Michigan and maybe elsewhere, if he is seen as being in bed with Detroit’s indicted mayor. What can he do?

What can he possibly do?

***

That scenario, or a similar one, has been flickering through the minds of Democratic strategists for weeks. Some are now urging Gov. Jennifer Granholm to do the right thing, and remove the mayor.

She has the legal right to do so. As they see it, that would be a win-win situation for virtually everybody. The city could get back to something like normalcy, and go back to trying to compete for new jobs and convention business in this difficult economic environment.

The former mayor could concentrate full-time on trying to defend himself. And the city would have a mayor people, including a candidate for president, would cheerfully be willing to be seen with.

That all sounds lovely. Except, it is very unlikely to happen.

And it probably shouldn’t happen. Not yet, anyway. Kwame Kilpatrick has, by any measure, disgraced and damaged his city.

But unless its citizens or its council remove him, he is entitled to his day in court, even if he thereby proves further that he cares about nothing and no one except himself. For the governor to remove him arbitrarily would set a very bad example for the future.

This state and its largest city have endured a lot, including fires, riots, and invasions. We’ll survive this too, in the end. But it would be nice if sometimes, it was just a little bit easier.

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Interview: Bill Rustem - 5/14/2008

Yesterday, Detroit City Council voted to do three things…to censure Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, to ask the governor to remove him, and to start a process to remove him themselves. We wondered if anything like this has ever happened in Michigan’s history. And could it conceivable happen in other cities in the state. To find out Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry called Bill Rustem. He’s the head of Public Sector Consultants.

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Essay: Population Trends - 5/13/2008

There are probably a few heroic women, born towards the end of the baby boom, who will have another child. But not many; the youngest of them are now 44. To be sure, a few male boomers will go on getting into difficulty with women of succeeding generations.

But for all intents and purposes, my generation is done having children. The great demographic pig-in-the-python has moved on to running for president and worrying about Social Security. Those of us who are white weren‘t much on breeding anyway.

We had fewer babies than most other generations, with the result that while there are still 75 million of us in this country, there are only about 40 million or so members of Generation X.

I hope President Obama or Clinton pushes through a Constitutional Amendment both doubling and protecting our Social Security and Medicare before the younger generations replace us in Congress. John McCain is too old to be a boomer, and as a mere former POW, can have no idea how hard our lives could be.

Seriously, though - population trends have fluctuated greatly throughout history. There are relatively few native-born members of John McCain’s generation, kids born between 1930 and 1945.

They came into a world in the grip of our nation’s worst economic depression, followed by the world’s most terrible war.

First daddy had too little money, and then he was gone for four years. Now, once again, we seem to be barely replacing ourselves, especially in Michigan. But I am not all that worried about the numbers themselves. True, there is reason to be concerned about the steep drop in the number of very young children in Michigan.

Frankly, they aren’t here because the jobs aren’t here. If we employed their parents, they would come. I haven’t looked up statistics for Detroit in 1930, but I’ll bet the demographics are way out of whack. It was a good old medium-sized town in 1900, with about 285,000 people - a little smaller than Toledo today. Then the auto factories arrived. Thirty years later, the Motor City had more than six times as many people - well over a million and a half.

That’s not because the population took fertility drugs. It is because people poured in from the rural South and Eastern Europe. They wanted good jobs working in the plants.

Those jobs are disappearing now, and people by the hundred thousands have been drifting away. That’s left us with empty buildings and too many sprawling and now unnecessary schools.

There’s no doubt that we need to get our groove back. Some would say we do that by slashing tax rates to the bone to lure businesses in. That might have worked in 1908.

Worked to attract unskilled laborers, that is. The high-tech, highly skilled jobs of the future will be created by people who demand a decent infrastructure. We have to spend the money to build it, before they will come. Henry Ford knew that.

I wish those running our state today knew it too.

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Interview: Ken Darga - 5/13/2008

Michigan has fewer young children than it did just eight years ago. The declining population could impact everything from schools to retail sales in the years to come. Ken Darga is chief demographer for the state. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: The Ethanol Craze - 5/12/2008

Depending on whom you talk to, corn-based ethanol is either the future, or the biggest con job since the perpetual motion machine. Nobody doubts any more that we need to do something different. The first time I ever saw a solar cell was in seventh-grade science class.

The teacher told us that by the time we grew up, our cars would be powered by these. I think the electric battery was supposed to get us through cloudy days. Sounded great to me. However, that was in the fall of ... 1963, and I have yet to see a solar-powered car.

As far as the solar powered future is concerned, I am running out of time to enjoy it.

The fact of the matter is that we still don’t have an agreed-upon replacement for gasoline. General Motors is once again working hard on an electric car. All the automakers are working on hybrids of some kind. Stan Ovshinsky, the now-retired founder of Energy Conversion Devices in Troy, is betting the future will be hydrogen. Others are betting on corn-based ethanol – at least as a transitional fuel. Then there is so-called cellulosic ethanol, which we first heard about when George W. Bush suggested making fuel out of switch grass.

In Illinois, a company called Coskata says it can make ethanol out of everything from table scraps to old tires. And their arguments were convincing enough to get General Motors to invest. The one thing all these people have in common is that they know the world’s fossil fuel reserves are running out.

Gas and oil are getting more and more costly, and nobody has a clear-cut solution as to what to do next. Actually, these are things we’ve known for decades, but never did anything about them.

Some say the oil and automotive industries did their best to make sure nobody did anything about them. Well, that’s changing now. We may not have one common fuel, at least not for awhile.

And we do need to experiment with as many alternatives as possible. But while I am no engineer, I have serious doubts as to whether corn-based ethanol makes sense.

Our sensible neighbors to the north get it. Monday, the Ottawa Citizen ran an editorial highly critical of the whole idea.

Noting that rising global prices and increasing food shortages have sparked recent riots in Haiti, the newspaper said “Food supply is a complex thing. But it is becoming clear biofuel production is playing a role in shrinking that supply.”

The image of peasants starving so we can fill up our Lincoln Navigators with ethanol-based fuel is not charming. The Ottawa paper suggests refocusing biofuel research towards algae. That sounds good. Making gasoline out of mosquitoes would sound good, too, But whatever we do has to pass two tests:

Will it work? And perhaps more importantly, what damage would it do to the environment and the ecosystem?

We are in a process of transition, and here’s something else they didn’t tell us back in seventh grade.

Whatever we do, it won’t be easy.

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Interview: Bruce Dale - 5/12/2008

As gas prices continue to rise, alternative fuels have become more popular. One of the more talked-about alternative fuels is corn-based ethanol. Bruce Dale is a distinguished professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about the future of alternative fuels.

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Essay: State of the State - 5/9/2008

When I read Charlie Ballard’s state of the state survey this morning, a few things never mentioned in it popped into my mind.

First of all, it seems clear that anyone who wants to win Michigan this fall better stop talking about silly side issues, and start addressing our state and our nation’s serious economic problems.

So far the Democratic candidates have spent a lot of time squabbling about who was most against Iraq. Meanwhile, we’ve paid vast attention to a retired preacher whose words have since been repudiated by the candidate who used to go to his church.

Ballard’s survey, which is one of the most accurate in opinion polling, indicates what voters think of those issues. The answer is: Not much. Only seven out of every thousand feel that foreign policy is a top issue in this campaign.

And only two in every thousand think that race relations and diversity should be on the front burner. What about the so-called ‘moral issues” that seem to surface every election season?

Well, they are of concern to precisely one half of one percent of Michigan’s population. We are facing tough economic times this year, and our hearts are in our wallets.

Two thirds of us think the top issues are either jobs or the economy. When you throw in taxes and budget issues, that rises to about eighty percent of us.

When you look at these numbers, it is hard to see how any Democratic candidate for president could possibly fail to win Michigan this fall. A solid majority think George W. Bush has done a poor job.

They don’t much like Jennifer Granholm either, but she isn’t running. What they really worry about, however, could be best summed up by the title of Charlie Ballard’s last book:

Michigan’s Economic Future.

Four out of seven of us say we are worse off than a year ago. Less than one in every four of us thinks we are in better shape. We still are hopeful about the future.

Americans are traditionally the most optimistic people on the planet. But we aren’t starry-eyed. Forty-four percent of us think we’ll be better off this time next year. Thirty-five percent say worse off. And that’s the most pessimistic they’ve been since this survey was started. Voters are going to be looking for a president who can help us get out of this pothole, and avoid bigger ones.

Twenty-eight years ago, I covered another presidential campaign that looked like it would end in a dead heat. Then the candidates had a single debate. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” the challenger asked, “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores?”

Days later, the man who said those words carried 44 states, including Michigan. Today, we once again know the answer to those questions.

For the rest of this year, voters are going to be looking for someone who can make them feel better off four years from now.

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Interview: Charles Ballard - 5/9/2008

The results of Michigan’s annual State of the State Survey were released today. The survey asked Michigan residents about their economic situation and what issues they thought were most important. Charles Ballard is a Professor of Economics at Michigan State University. He is also the director of the State of the State Survey. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Inflation - 5/7/2008

If you really want to know how bad inflation is, you could do one of two things. You could talk to distinguished economists and bankers like Dana Johnson, and read official government reports.

Or you can talk to someone on a fixed income who has to drive a lot. Or go to the closest grocery store, and talk to the parent who is doing the weekly shopping for the wife and kids.

You are likely to get two vastly different impressions. Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t Weimar Germany, where you had to take a wheelbarrow full of cash to the store to get a loaf of bread.

It isn’t even Argentina in the 1980s, where I watched people run out and buy merchandise on their lunch hour in case the value of their money melted to nothing by nightfall. But there is a problem with inflation in this country. It is growing, and those suffering the most are those who least can afford to do so. Which is usually the case.

To some extent, inflation hits everybody differently. When we measure inflation, we normally use the consumer price index, which is based on an attempt to create a so-called “market basket” of goods and services reflective of what the average consumer might buy.

In some areas, particularly electronics, we are actually seeing deflation. In 1950, a small black and white TV with a fuzzy picture cost about five thousand dollars in today’s money.

And you don’t have to be very old to know that I-pods and big-screen, HDTVs cost less now than just a very few years ago.

Housing is cheaper too. Which is not a good thing if, like most middle-aged Americans, your single biggest asset is in the value of your home. Oh, you are fine for now, unless you need to sell it.

Then, especially in Michigan, good luck. Where inflation is steepest these days is in food and energy prices. Those tend to be fixed and unavoidable costs for most people, especially in Michigan, where we have decidedly inferior public transportation.

Poorer people pay a higher percentage of their total income for both food and fuel. That means their incomes are shrinking.

The kind of inflation we are seeing now hurts the poor more than it does the rich -- and especially the poor whose incomes don’t automatically rise with inflation. Crash programs aimed at increasing ethanol production could harm some people more than it helps them.

Hurt them by driving up food prices. Few people have noticed, but Costco and Sam’s Club are quietly limiting the amount of rice customers can buy. They worry about coming shortages.

Alan Greenspan, the most famous chair of the Federal Reserve in history, said this week he now fears the economy is once again prone to a new round of inflation. When he speaks, you can bet his successor, Ben Bernanke, is listening. If you expect the feds to cut interest rates again in the near future, you may want to think again.

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Interview: Dana Johnson - 5/7/2008

Inflation is rising… And, it’s worrying economists and investors. Dana Johnson is chief economist of Comerica Bank. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about how concerned we should be about the rate of inflation.

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