Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: The New GM - 7.10.09

A new General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy… to be known, now, as General Motors Company. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry shares his thoughts on what this new company needs to do to succeed...

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They are launching what they are calling the new General Motors today, which is to say that a stripped-down, hopefully solvent, version of the company has emerged from bankruptcy.

And now for the hard part.

Now, you may find this bizarre, but when I started thinking about General Motors this morning, the first thing I thought of was Benjamin Franklin. When the founding fathers had finished writing the document that became our Constitution, a woman came up to him. “So, what kind of government have you given us?” she said.

“A republic,” Franklin supposedly answered. “If you can keep it.” President Obama and we-the-people-the-taxpayers have given GM a new lease on life -- but it is up to the corporation to keep it.

That won’t be easy. General Motors comes out of the financial operating room into what is still the worst economy in many years. What’s more, it is surrounded by more competition than ever.

Odds are that even in a best-case scenario, the Big Three will be no more than half of an auto world that might be better described as the Medium-Sized Six, plus assorted short subjects.

Yet there are a few hopeful signs. Chevrolet has, against all odds, a genuine new hit, or semi-hit car with its Camaro. There are also signs that the company understands - really understands - that it cannot do business in the same old bloated arrogant way. They can no longer waste billions and tens of billions on bizarre diversification schemes, like buying companies that have no connection to what their core businesses are. I think Fritz Henderson gets it. I hope the executives who have survived the purges get it. And I know that Edward Whitacre, General Motors’ new chairman, must get it. He is a man who hasn’t spent a day in the car business, but who knows how to build and grow corporations. What General Motors needs to do is to keep the best of the old GM, the knowledge and engineering know-how, and the vision that has created some amazing cars. Then, it needs to completely remake the corporate culture. GM needs to be run by a team of brilliant, level-headed businessmen who are, at the same time, neurotic, frightened of the competition, and a little paranoid. They need, in other words, to be convinced that they have to struggle every minute to be better than the competition in every way. That won’t be easy. This was a culture that was supremely arrogant long past the time it had anything to be arrogant about. However, what I see makes me think GM has at last put in place the tools to succeed. Yes - government ownership is a potential problem. At some point any company has to dare greatly and take big risks, and government ownership may inhibit that. Washington should get out of GM as quickly as reasonably possible. Still, we can’t forget that if it hadn’t been for the government, General Motors today would not exist at all. Somehow, despite the obstacles, I think the new GM has a good shot at making it. For all of our sakes, I certainly hope it does.

Essay: Modern Bankruptcy - 7.7.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is thinking about the old, and new, General Motors...

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Here’s something interesting about our current economic troubles. For one thing, they have altered the language. Not too many years ago, the only time you heard the term “bailout” was when you were watching movies about World War II fighter pilots.

Now bailout may be the most overused word in the language. My dentist, for example, suggested I seek a government bailout for my mouth, which I didn’t appreciate.

Especially because I didn’t see any chance of getting one, even though my teeth are on their third or fourth restructuring. If that isn’t bad enough, the fruit market where I shop had a “bailout sale” on romaine lettuce a few weeks ago.

Clearly this has gotten out of hand. I am ready to move onwards and upwards to new and better mixed metaphors and misuse of terms, and I think the General Motors bankruptcy is going to offer us a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

Now, if you are relatively young, you may not believe this, but there was a time when bankruptcy had sort of a stigma about it, when companies worked hard to avoid falling into Chapter 11.

Those days are long gone. Today, the main street of life appears to be on-the-rocks alley. I have heard stories about young engineers at Ford who can’t get a date these days.

And no wonder. No self-respecting sexy young person is going to go out with somebody whose firm hasn’t achieved bankruptcy yet.

Not in Michigan, anyway.

But the thing I find most intriguing about modern bankruptcy is the concept of dividing a firm into two parts, as in, for want of a better example, the “good GM,“ and the “bad GM.”

Here’s how that works, as I understand it. What General Motors is now going through is nothing like the old-fashioned bankruptcy our fathers feared. It is more like a government-run rite of purification.

By the end of this week, something called the “New GM” is expected to emerge from the courts. As I understand it, the New GM will consist of everything good in the company, everything that is potentially profitable. Corvettes, for example, and Cadillacs. It will also be controlled by the U.S. government, which owns most of it.

By contrast, the Old GM is all the bad stuff. Obsolete factories, about 50 of them, many of which have serious environmental problems. The man who will be CEO of the rotten bad old GM is Al Koch, who ran a Southfield-based business consulting firm.

His job will be to dispose of those plants and then try to wrestle with everybody who says General Motors owes them money. After that, his job will be liquidating the old GM, putting it out of business.

I think that sounds a lot more fun than running the new GM under government supervision and heavy pressure to make a profit. I plan to keep my eye on what goes on at the old GM.

If all that works out, I might ask if he could help me divide myself into the Old Lessenberry and the New Lessenberry.

I’m sure I’d do better at life. I’m just not too sure about the liquidation part.

Essay: Questionable Priorities - 7.1.09

Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking what the state cuts to Medicaid are going to mean for Michiganders…

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I’m not sure what the weather is where you are. But it is a bleak day for thousands of Michigan adults who have been managing their vision, hearing and dental problems with the help of Medicaid.

Due to our budget problems, the state, as of today, is no longer paying for a number of formerly covered services. This includes routine eye and dental exams, glasses and fillings.

Now, the state will pay for dental emergencies. Which is usually what happens when you don’t take care of your teeth. That will also cost the state a lot more than routine care would have cost.

I’ve had six root canals, and I know. But hey. Nobody ever accused our politicians of too much common sense. Incidentally, if you didn’t know about these new restrictions, that’s not surprising.

So far as I can tell, there has been next to nothing written about this in any Michigan newspaper, although they are killing acres of trees to report that Michael Jackson is still dead.

Last week I received an outraged letter from Jamie Wierenga in Kalamazoo. He isn’t on Medicaid himself, but he knows about vision. He is a certified optician. A successful one, but not a selfish one.

“I worked hard to get where I am,” he told me.

“But I also share the roads with the people who, for whatever reason, are on Medicaid.” What bothers him most is that, “folks who should be wearing medically necessary eyeglasses to drive are not going to be able to drive. How are these people going to be able to get to work? How can they function? Won’t this change in Medicaid coverage lead to more layoffs? How can these people ever get off Medicaid and welfare support if they cannot see?”

I also heard from a former student, Miriam Braunstein, a brilliant writer whose body is being destroyed by the ravages of mitochondrial disease. She has struggled fiercely to be independent, and lives in a small, wheel-chair friendly house.

When she got the “Dear Beneficiary” letter from the state, Miriam and her caregivers scrambled to get her the hearing aid she was beginning to desperately need.

Fortunately, it came yesterday, a day before it would have cost them $2,000 they don’t have. What she isn’t sure of is her teeth, since the letter from the governor only said that if the state had started fixing them before the cutoff, “they may still pay for it.”

She understands that our state has a massive budget crisis. Yet, how much money is cutting off adult Medicaid likely to save? The dental portion saves a puny $2.9 million. The rest of the cuts probably save no more than that.

We will spend $2 billion this year on our prisons, some of which goes to keep elderly cons and small-time druggies locked up.

It seems to me that somebody’s priorities are screwed up, and it isn’t Jim and Miriam’s. If you agree, you might want to let your state legislator know. And think about this. If we live long enough, we will eventually need these type of services too.

I’ll see you at the charity clinic.

Essay: Something Goes Right - 6.29.09

Two “generals” announced they’ll be setting up shop in the state. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry gives us the low-down on the good news…

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There’s an old Paul Simon song, part of which goes like this:

***

when something goes right

Well it's likely to lose me

It's apt to confuse me

because it's such an unusual sight.

***

That’s a familiar feeling in Michigan these days. But last week, something did go right. Two somethings, in fact.

On Friday, General Motors announced it would build a new small, fuel-efficient car at a plant in Oakland County’s Orion Township. That means twelve hundred jobs were saved that would have been lost. Michigan was competing against Tennessee and Wisconsin, and we won. Nobody knows exactly why GM made that choice, but this much is clear: Michigan officials pulled together and worked hard and creatively in order to make it happen.

Originally, a factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee appeared to have all the advantages. As the Detroit Free Press’s Katherine Yung noted last weekend, Spring Hill is a more modern plant.

It also has a paint shop. The factory in Orion Township didn’t have a paint shop, and you might have figured that was that. Especially since it costs around $180 million to build one. But spurred by pressure from Gov. Jennifer Granholm, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation went to work.

The MEDC set up what amounted to a war room, where staffers monitored what the other states were offering. Eventually, they cobbled together a bunch of business tax incentives and offered GM a tax credit package worth $779 million.

The governor lobbied GM intensely, and in the end, it all paid off. Now, there are those who think this whole decision may have been political. After all, the government now owns most of General Motors. Michigan has the nation’s highest jobless rate, and state Democrats could use a break before next year’s elections.

Tennessee, on the other hand, is hopelessly Republican. Did the President intervene here? People in the know say not. The governor was told flatly that this would be a business decision, and Obama’s auto task force would not be involved.

The day before that welcome auto news, the state scored another coup that could have even greater potential implications.

General Electric announced it would hire more than a thousand workers for an operation in western Wayne County that will focus heavily on renewable energy, especially the form the governor is most passionate about: wind technology. In this case, there is evidence that the President pushed GE to consider Michigan. What matters, however, is not how we got the project, but that we did.

The governor has long had a vision of the state turning to wind power, not only as a source of energy, but as a major source of new jobs making the components that make wind energy possible.

We simply don’t know how much long-term economic potential this will have. But it seems clear that it ought to position Michigan as a national leader in wind energy technology.

We aren’t out of the hole yet, by any means. But this may have been Jennifer Granholm‘s best week in office. And this time, she deserves considerable credit for making both things happen.

Essay: Farewell to the Future - 6.24.09

The state Senate has voted to cut funding for the Michigan Promise Scholarship. This has Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry worried about our state’s future...

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Yesterday, as the state senate was getting ready to vote to wipe out the Michigan Promise Grant and some other college scholarship money for poor students, a few voices were raised in opposition.

Nancy Cassis, a Republican from Novi, tried to get her fellow senators to fund the program at a much-reduced level. Liz Brater, an Ann Arbor Democrat, said to eliminate the promise grant was more than just breaking a sacred promise to Michigan’s college students.

It is also a move designed to sabotage our state’s future economy. But Tony Stamas of Midland, the chair of the appropriations committee wasn’t sympathetic. He said “we don’t have the dollars,” which, in a sense is true. The state is running an enormous budget deficit, and painful cuts have to be made.

But then, according to the respected Gongwer News Service, Stamas added that the state also has a promise to keep prisoners behind bars. Well, nobody has been suggesting turning our serial killers loose to roam the streets. But I am struck by his choice of priorities. For years, it’s been clear that a big part of our economic problem in Michigan has been an insufficiently educated work force.

We have a smaller percentage of young adults with college degrees than our surrounding states, the ones that compete most heavily with us for jobs. There’s no great mystery as to why this is so.

For many years, you could come out of high school and get a good-paying job slapping fenders on cars or bending metal on an assembly line. Those jobs have vanished now, and aren’t coming back. Michigan needs to transition from a brawn-based to a brain-based economy, as fast as possible. The Michigan Promise Grant is designed to help do that, by providing scholarships worth up to $4,000 to college-bound kids graduating from Michigan high schools.

Lt. Gov. John Cherry knows how short-sighted eliminating the grant is. Five years ago, when times were still relatively good, he chaired a special commission that looked at higher education in the state. Its members concluded that we needed to start by doubling the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded within a decade. We are now running far behind that pace, and zeroing out the promise grant will set us back even further. “It’s so basic to your state’s future,” the lieutenant governor said yesterday. Ninety-six thousand students were depending on promise grant funding this fall.

The lieutenant governor argued that eliminating the promise grant would be like a farmer eating his seed corn.

But he failed by a single vote to sway the Republican-controlled senate. The senators also cut funding for other need-based programs, including competitive scholarships and tuition grants. They slashed money for nursing students at a time when Michigan has a dramatic shortage of nurses and has to import them from Canada.

Now, what the senate did isn’t the final word. The Democrats control the House, and some of this money may yet be restored.

But the senate’s action is profoundly dismaying. Our elected leaders are supposed to try to give us a better future.

And sadly, this bunch just isn’t there yet.

Paying the Piper - 6.19.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about how to create a budget for the state budget...

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We are about to start feeling something that, until now, has been mostly theoretical. Namely, the effects of the ongoing “great recession” on services government provides.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from a reporter in Lansing who said, “This ought to scare any thinking person in Michigan.”

An education bill passed by the Senate wipes out all funding for early childhood development, and bizarrely, also would do away with school bus inspections. And it cuts the amount of money the state provides for each pupil by more than $100 per student.

That means teacher layoffs. Now, that isn’t a final figure. The Senate is controlled by Republicans, and their priorities are quite different from the Democrats in the House.

But the bottom line is that there isn’t any money. The state has a giant sinkhole in its budget that is getting worse all the time.

As of last month, state revenues had fallen by 23 percent. According to Bob Emerson, the budget director, this was the worst decline since the Great Depression. Since then, the news hasn’t been any better. Unemployment last month jumped to 14.1 percent.

That translated into another $62 million the state was counting on that isn’t there. People who aren’t working don’t pay taxes. Some of this is being covered by a billion or so of federal stimulus money.

Even that isn‘t proving to be enough. Michigan is having to cut its budget, and then cut it again.

We‘re going to feel that when the kids go back to school thist fall, and in many other ways. Yet some are still playing politics. The latest skirmish is over the governor’s plan to lay off more than a hundred rookie state troopers, all of whom have been trained at considerable expense to the state.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop denounced this as “a way to say to the world we’ve lost our mind.” Crime increases in a bad economy, and he thinks we should be focusing more on law enforcement, not less. That’s reasonable, but disingenuous.

Especially since his Senate Republicans are calling for a further $4 million cut to the state police budget.

You can’t have it both ways.

We’ve all been used to getting services from the state that come so automatically we don’t think about them.

Except now we have to. We need our elected leaders to level with us, and offer us competing and honest visions for the future. There’s less money than there used to be.

There also ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Do we want what we are used to having?

If so, we are going to have to raise taxes. See, I said that and I wasn’t struck down by a thunderbolt. If we don’t want to raise taxes, we are going to have to be satisfied with poorer schools, less law enforcement and a lower quality of life in a number of ways.

We can’t have it both ways. Nor are we likely to always agree.

But what we can do is demand honesty and accountability from those we elect. We are facing hard choices.

And we need to make them without blinders on.

Essay: The "National" Summit - 6.17.09

Today is the final day of the National Summit taking place in Detroit. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks the meeting is neither “national” nor a “summit…

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When I was studying European history many years ago, I had to try and understand the Holy Roman Empire. That became much easier once I stumbled across Voltaire‘s famous quip that it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Which brings us to the so-called National Summit, a three-day gathering of politicians and business people in Detroit’s Renaissance Center. Now, I have no doubt that a national summit on the economy would be a good idea. America has enormous deficits, enormous debt and depends far too much on China and the Middle East.

However, what is happening in Detroit this week is neither national nor a summit. It seems instead to be a giant waste of time.

What I would expect a national summit to involve would be a gathering of world-class economists and the nation’s key political and business leaders. President Obama would open the proceedings, followed by somebody like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.

They would then proceed to have working sessions to hammer out a blueprint for our future. But that’s not what has been going on this week. Instead, a succession of politicians, local worthies, and mainly local business leaders made speeches at each other.

These included top officials of the auto companies, heads of smaller companies and chambers of commerce, and also a fair number of Canadian executives, which makes sense for this area, but made me wonder why they didn’t call it an international summit.

The governor spoke, and the heads of Michigan’s three major universities, and everybody else locally who needed to have themselves seen. However, some of the choices were baffling.

Charles Ballard, the ranking expert on the Michigan economy was evidently not invited. However, an engaging young woman named Becky Quick, who hosts a cable show called Squawk Box, was. What she and all the rest of them did was make speeches.

Highly forgettable speeches, most of them. The highest ranking political attendee was a member of the President’s cabinet. Here’s what his own press release said about his appearance: “U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced a new initiative designed to streamline government bureaucracy and bring services and solutions directly to businesses and entrepreneurs.”

I’ve read sexier sentences in the manual that came with my toaster oven. What’ s wrong with all of this is not just that the Detroit Economic Club put on a mind-numbingly boring event.

What wrong is that they bit off more than they could chew. We have a national economic crisis, true. But we aren’t going to solve that with a regional conference in Michigan. Even a good one.

But we also have a special form of crisis in Michigan, one we could do something about. Our core industry has fundamentally collapsed. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our state government broken. And our politicians and business leaders seem determined to drag our state over the cliff.

Now here’s an idea: Convene a real summit with the people who have the power to actually do something about that, and put pressure on them to do it.

Because if you haven’t noticed, Michigan is running out of time.

Essay: Clunker Bill - 6.16.09

The US House is taking up a 106 billion dollar war-funding bill today. Democratic leaders have attached the so-called “cash-for-clunkers” measure to the bill. Michigan Radio’s Political analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks that’s a bad idea…

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You may want to label me a traitor to my state and its most important industry. I may end up with even fewer friends than I have now. But as Martin Luther once said:

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” In other words, Congress is about to pass the famous “Cash for Clunkers” bill designed to boost car sales. And I think it is a bad idea.

Don’t get me wrong. I want Detroit to sell more cars. I did my puny part by buying a new car from a Ford division in April.

But this bill makes no sense.

When I first heard about it, I thought, great. This will get those fume-belching rattletraps off the road. You know, those ancient 1970-something cars, with doors held together with coat hangers. I had a Chevy like that in college. It got eight miles to the gallon.

But this cash-for-clunkers bill won’t touch those.

Instead, it is designed to help middle-class people upgrade their current chariot, and I think it has vast potential for fraud and abuse. For one thing, as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine noted, you could use the voucher to buy a new gas-guzzling Hummer H3.

Here’s how the bill would work. Now, there are minor differences between the Senate and House versions, but the essentials look like this. Only cars made since 1984 would qualify.

You could get a voucher for $3,500 if you purchase or lease a new car that gets at least four miles to the gallon more than your old one. That would go up a thousand dollars if you get a new car that gets ten miles to the gallon more.

The catch is that the dealer can’t resell your old car; he or she will have to scrap it. So here’s the problem. First, if your old car is worth more than the voucher, you’d be nuts to participate.

Second, if I want to be some environmental hero, and bring in a 1985 Corvette, do you really think the dealer will scrap it - or do you think he will sell it on the black market?

I think there is going to be a lot of that - not with Corvettes, but with old Tauruses and Chevy Impalas. Here a little secret. Most of the people who drive clunkers are poor. Even if their car qualifies for the program, they aren’t going to be able to buy a new Ford Escape or a new anything else with that voucher. They can buy the sort of cars that are supposed to be scrapped.

Ah, but this will still stimulate car sales.

Well, yes. But let me quote Consumer Reports. “While the measure is designed to help ailing US automakers, we found most of the new models we’d recommend as replacements are made in Japan.” Still, this is going to pass anyway, because they’ve added it to a bill to fund supplies for our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Nice trick, that, attaching one bill to a totally unrelated bill. Now that’s something that really should be illegal. Maybe I’ll sit in a 1968 Chevy tonight, and write my congressman.

Essay: The Road Ahead - 6.11.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is hoping the Fiat/Chrysler marriage produces a beautiful, new baby.

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As far as I can tell, pretty much everybody thinks the domestic auto industry is in critical condition, with the very survival of General Motors and Chrysler hanging in the balance.

And that’s the best news the auto industry, and the state of Michigan, has had in a long time.

Here’s what I mean. If you have cancer, you can’t possibly get better until you admit you are sick. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have been in bad shape for a long time.

We all knew this, but didn’t face up to it.

A few years ago, I asked an auto writer how GM could go on losing billions, year after year, without eventually running out of money. I was told I didn’t understand the economics of the industry, and that a lot of this was really paper losses and tax write-offs.

We all - the government, the media, all of us - took assertions like that at face value. What we should have remembered was what Mrs. Smith taught me in the second grade.

Which was that ten minus ten equals zero. Except the auto industry passed zero a long time ago, and got down into the minus numbers. Now, at least, they are starting over, after a whole lot of stress, trauma, and white collar and blue collar blood on the floor.

And here’s why there is reason for hope. First, take the one automaker not in bankruptcy, Ford Motor Company. Three years ago, they were the first to think outside the box. They hired a executive from an entirely different culture to shake things up.

Today, though hit by the recession, Ford is not in receivership. It has a bunch of new exciting cars. It may soon be the number one domestic automaker for the first time since the 1920s.

Chrysler had been essentially given up for dead six months ago. But with a big assist from the federal government, it has now merged with Fiat, which may actually be a good fit. Of course, we won’t know for sometime how well this will really work.

But they have a shot, and they are still alive. General Motors remains the big question mark. For decades, this has been a poorly run, provincial and arrogant institution.

GM resisted effort after effort by outsiders to change it. Ross Perot failed. John Smale ultimately failed. The smug men who drove this company into the ground thought GM was just too big to fail.

Well, they were wrong. Now, their GM has been destroyed, and that may just save this company. The U.S. taxpayers own them now, and the new board is bringing in a tough turnaround specialist.

Edward Whitacre, GM’s new post-bankruptcy chair, sounds like just the man to exterminate any last complacent thinking. Gerry Meyers, the last chair of the former American Motors Corporation, said “He is blunt, but he’s so often right that you accept the abuse.“

Rough days lie ahead. But think of this. Five years ago, our auto industry was headed to the museum. Now, the cries of pain you hear just might be those of something healthy struggling to be born.

All Deliberate Speed - 6.9.09

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There were two major court rulings yesterday -- one in Detroit and one in Washington -- which were hard to accept, but which were also exactly the right things to do.

The most important was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?s who issued a stay delaying the decision made in bankruptcy court last week that was to have let the Fiat-Chrysler marriage go into effect yesterday afternoon.

This ruling came just after I finished taping a half-hour TV show with two automotive industry experts. They gave Chrysler a chance to survive, but only if nothing happened to mess up the alliance with Fiat. Chrysler is losing $100 million a day, and the fear is that any delay could cause the company's value to fall even further. So what in the world was Justice Ginsburg doing?

The answer: Her job.

This deal allowing Chrysler to emerge from bankruptcy and merge with Fiat was rushed through the courts and the normal time delays waived. But two Indiana pension funds who are owed a lot of money by Chrysler filed suit to stop all this. They argued in bankruptcy court that the U.S. Treasury violated their property rights.

They lost the argument there. But they've changed tactics. The pension funds are now saying it was unconstitutional for both the Bush and Obama administrations to use the so-called TARP funds --Troubled Asset Relief Program --to bail out the automakers.

Whatever the merits of that argument, it may deserve a hearing in the nation's highest court. And frankly, something of the gravity and scope of all this deserves a bit of judicial review.

Chrysler didn't get into this pickle overnight, and a few days more or less isn?t going to decide the fate of western civilization.

There was a second legal decision that was of much less importance for the economy, but closes a long chapter in our history A Wayne County judge allowed the City of Detroit to complete demolition of the ruins of Tiger Stadium, an icon of baseball history.

This was, sadly, the right thing to do. I say that as someone steeped in baseball nostalgia. I saw famous games there, some almost half a century ago. My father saw Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

I never thought they should have built a new stadium in the 1990s, but they did. The city deliberately let the old park decay and crumble. Last year they tore most of it down. A die-hard group called the old Tiger Stadium Conservancy fought to save the remnant.

They wanted to build a museum and a field for youth leagues. But there was, and is, no money, in this city with tens of thousands of vacant buildings and children with too little food.

We didn't take care of it, and it was time to let it go. Tiger Stadium, like Chrysler, were born in an era when baseball was the only big-league sport, and cars were propelling our state into unheard-of prosperity. We live in a different world now.

Let's hope we keep the best of our sometimes glorious past, and find the way to a successful future.