Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Medical Marijuana - 4.4.11

State voters legalized medical marijuana more than two years ago, but administering the new law has been anything but smooth. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has some thoughts about this.

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Two years ago, Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Voters from liberal Ann Arbor to staunchly conservative Ottawa County supported this change.

Some, to be sure, saw this as opening the door to a complete legalization of marijuana. However, they appear to have been a minority. Most people seem to have felt that those who are legitimately suffering from disease such as glaucoma ought to be able to use the drug in cases where it could ease their pain.

But the devil is always in the details, and we probably should have foreseen that administering this law was going to be an unholy mess. Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press took a comprehensive look at how the medical marijuana law has been working.

To nobody’s surprise, their answer was: Not very well. The state is struggling with a huge backlog of applications to grow the stuff.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have been going after people who may be falsely claiming to be growing and selling pot for medical use, and there are also rumors that certain physicians are happy to certify that most anybody qualifies to use marijuana for “medical” purposes.

On top of that, neither the constitutional amendment -- or any other law -- has made it clear where medical marijuana is supposed to come from. Part of the problem is that marijuana is a controlled substance whose use is illegal under federal law.

So, basically, the original source of any pot supply has got to be illegal, even if the state of Michigan approves someone to grow marijuana for medical reasons. There is also, so far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to ensure purity or quality control of the supply.

Basically, then, we’ve got a system of something approaching anarchy when it comes to medical marijuana.

So, what do we do about it? The Free Press sensibly argues in favor of setting up a state-approved distribution network. They would then charge licensing fees which could then be used for the costs of administering the system, and what must be a rapidly growing bureaucracy connected with it. There might also be streamlined mechanisms for approval similar to what pharmacies use for other drugs.

These are all sensible ideas, on paper. However -- is the state really in a place or a position to create or vastly expand an administrative bureaucracy? No matter how foolproof a system we devise, people are going to try to get around it. We’re being told by the governor that we can’t fund schools and colleges the way we used to. We can’t give tax credits to the working poor, or to the movie industry.

Do we really want to spend our scarce resources chasing down casual potheads? I have no desire to use marijuana or any other drug, and even less desire to have someone high crash into my car.

But I am wondering if the most sensible approach right now might be a version of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” except in cases of the grossest abuse. We are in an age of limits, and Michigan can handle only so many crises at one time. My guess is that regulating the medical marijuana law isn’t the biggest problem we have.

Essay: Doctors With Borders - 4.1.11

Michigan is facing a medical school boom, with new ones in Oakland County and Kalamazoo on the way. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry wondered how we can get the most out of this.

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I had a interesting conversation yesterday with Joe Schwarz, one of the best-informed, multi-talented men in public life in this state. After a stint as mayor of his native Battle Creek, Schwarz spent sixteen years in the state senate, where he was immensely knowledgeable on education policy and finance.

That was, of course, back in the era before term limits. Schwarz is also one of those people whose resume could fill a box. He’s also had a career in the U.S. Navy, and as a spy in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. He ran for governor once and congress twice, finally winning a single term in 2004.

Schwarz’s problem was never the general election. Every time he got to one of those, he won easily. But he had trouble in Republican primaries. He is a fiscal conservative and a military hawk, but also believes in funding education, and that abortion should be “legal, safe and rare.” Nor does he always suffer fools gladly.

By the way, I didn’t mention his day job. He is an otolaryngologist, which we civilians call an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and is still happily practicing medicine.

That is, when he isn’t teaching at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Schwarz understands health care issues, and I was curious about our medical school explosion.

The U of M has a medical school; Wayne State has one; Michigan State has two; Oakland University and Beaumont Hospital have started one, and Western Michigan is now starting one.

Is that too many? Will we be producing too many doctors?

That’s a good question, the good doctor told me, but not the most important one. When all these medical schools are up and running, they’ll be producing something like six hundred and ninety doctors a year, trained largely at state expense.

If current trends continue, about half will eventually leave the state and practice elsewhere. My guess, given our situation, is that the real figure will be considerably higher.

There are areas of this state which are under-served by physicians; other places, like the rich sections of Oakland County, where doctors are thick on the ground. But the biggest problem is what the new doctors are specializing in. What’s needed most are family practitioners. These days, fewer than five percent of new doctors want to go into family practice, in large part because they make less than specialists.

Joe Schwarz has a solution for that: Michigan should offer full-ride scholarships to fifty students a year interested in family practice, or maybe pediatrics. In return, they’d agree to practice medicine in this state for at least eight years. Otherwise, they’d have to pay Michigan back the two hundred thousand or so it cost to train them.

That might cost the state five million or so a year. But it strikes me as excellent public policy, and virtually pocket change in a state that spends nearly two billion a year on prisons.

Reinventing Michigan means more than just cutting taxes; we also need to invest for the future. My guess is that Governor Snyder put some money aside for his kids’ education.

Investing in family doctors sounds to me like a good way to invest in our entire state.

Essay: Mass Transit - 4.29.10

Daily commuter rail service between Detroit and Ann Arbor was supposed to start this fall but, once again, funding fell through. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry looks at the state’s mass transit dilemma…

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Many years ago, I was sent to Brazil to write a series of stories on economic development there. Later, in Washington, a cynical expert told me, “Brazil has a great future … and always will have.”

What he meant by that was that it was a giant nation full of promise which somehow always fails to fulfill its potential.

In recent years, I’ve often thought of that slogan. Not, however, in connection with Brazil, but in terms of mass transit and Michigan.

We are always said to be just on the verge of mass transit. Light rail on Woodward, or extending the people mover in Detroit, or more recently, expanded commuter rail service.

But somehow, it never happens.

Barely three months ago, officials of SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, were talking about daily commuter rail service between Detroit and Ann Arbor by the end of October. Carmine Palombo, SEMCOG’s director of transportation programs, was talking about four trips a day.

This was to be sort of a demonstration project. It would be relatively easy, because the track is already there. The hope was that when people saw how convenient it was, funding for more lines would follow. But then the inevitable “Brazil moment” arrived.

The money SEMCOG was counting on fell through.

Local leaders have raised thirty-three million dollars for the project, but need something like fifty million more. They were counting on a hundred million dollars in federal funds.

But Washington said no. The cost-per-rider would be too high, the feds said. There is another problem. Even if everything worked out, they’d still need at least $10 million dollars a year for basic operating costs. SEMCOG hasn‘t got it.

“The project isn’t dead,” Palombo told the Detroit News, trying to put the best possible spin on his commuter train wreck. “But we have two big problems: We have no one to run it,” long-term. Additionally, he added, they lack a stable, “dedicated, source of funding.” If that doesn’t mean the project is dead, it does put it in sort of the same category as NASA’s plans to go to Mars.

They are still talking about offering commuter train service to some special events. But … don’t hold your breath. The commuter rail delay was greeted with dismay. Mass transit is something that everybody says they want. But two things aren’t clear:

First: Would people really use mass transit on a regular basis if it was available - or just hope their neighbors would?

Second: Are people willing to pay for it? Everybody is willing, of course to apply for federal funds. But even if they come, other money is likely to be needed for any system. SEMCOG‘s Palombo observed that “No matter how popular the service proves to be, it will die without proper state funding.” His preferred solution would be a rise in the gas and vehicle registration tax, with some of the money used for mass transit, and some to fix our wretched roads.

But, State Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop has vowed no new revenue for anything, no matter what. So it looks like we will go on thinking that mass transit is the wave of the future.

We’ll just leave it to other states to do it. Which should make thing interesting for Michigan when the petroleum finally runs out.

Essay: Unamerican Activities - 3.26.10

Since Congress passed health care reform, there have been an outpouring of threats against those who supported it. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry offers some perspective.

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It's hard to remember anything in America like the outpouring of hatred and bizarrely violent threats directed against congressmen who supported health care reform.

Not, that is, since the martyrs of the civil rights movement. But this week, several Michigan representatives, including the firmly anti-abortion Bart Stupak, received death threats.

Others, including the venerable John Dingell, have been deluged with a torrent of voice mail, e-mail, and snail mail messages ranging from the threatening to the merely foul and obscene. This is a national phenomenon, and two things are most appalling about it: First, the degree to which the reaction to health care reform is based on misunderstanding and deliberate lies.

And even worse, the actions of some politicians at winking at violent and extremist behavior. One problem is that few people seem to have actually read the bill or even a dispassionate summary of what is in it. Many evidently believe it means a complete government takeover of health care, and includes funding for abortion and "death panels" which will decide who will live and who will die.

In fact, what it does is require most people to buy health insurance from a private insurer, or pay a fine if they don?t choose to be insured, on the theory that otherwise, they are likely to become a burden on the public.

What the bill does, really, is provide a lot of new customers to the private sector, while also forbidding some infamous abuses. Companies can no longer deny you insurance because of a "pre-existing condition," nor cancel your insurance if you get sick.

Women can't be charged more than men, and kids can stay on their parents' policies till they are 26, which will be a great help to college students.

Now, there's nothing wrong with opposing this.

There is nothing wrong with vowing to defeat Democrats at the polls for supporting it, and promising to try to repeal this law.

There is everything wrong, however, with openly lying about what the law does, and even worse, at appearing to encourage violent and illegal action against its supporters.

And that's what is happening. Richard Thompson, the president of the Thomas More Law Center, is charging that "Americans who oppose abortion will now be forced to pay for abortion through their tax dollars," which is clearly false.

State Representative Tom McMillan called the nationally televised congressional vote "the taking of our freedoms under the cover of darkness," and has indicated he views this as a socialist takeover of our economy.

But to those who know their history, the anti-health care vigilante actions now being reported resemble nothing so much as what Nazi and Communist street gangs did in Europe in the 1930s.

We know how that turned out.

State Senator Gretchen Whitmer of East Lansing yesterday offered a resolution to condemn all these violent threats and behavior. "My children know you don't spit on anybody," she said. Whitmer mentions no party, not even the Tea Party, and says she wrote it so "people of good will can stand together and condemn this dangerous trend that threatens real political discourse in this country." Frankly, that's a pledge we should require every politician to take before we even think about voting for them.

Civility goes hand in hand with freedom. If we can't preserve both, we're all in deep trouble.

Essay: Building Bridges - 3.3.10

Earlier this week, the U.S. Coast Guard rejected the Ambassador Bridge Company’s application to build a second bridge across the Detroit River. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the implications of this decision…

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It is now perfectly clear that Matty Moroun is not going to be allowed to build a second bridge across the Detroit River.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Coast Guard sent his firm, the Detroit International Bridge Company, a letter terminating his application to build a second span next to his Ambassador Bridge.

The Coast Guard explained they couldn’t even consider his application for a number of reasons. First of all, it notes that there are issues of property rights that haven’t been resolved.

Actually, they have been resolved. Resolved against the Ambassador Bridge company. Last month a Wayne County judge ordered Moroun to tear down a duty-free store and some gasoline pumps he had constructed in anticipation of building a second bridge. The judge said they were built illegally, on property owned by the city of Detroit, and had to be removed.

Late last year, a different Wayne County judge ruled that Mr. Moroun had illegally occupied and fenced off part of the City of Detroit’s Riverside Park, and ordered him to vacate that too.

The Ambassador Bridge Company is appealing both decisions, but wouldn’t seem to have much chance. Additionally, it’s clear that the Canadian government doesn’t want him to build a second bridge next to his old one. There is considerable evidence that it would cause terrible traffic congestion and be an environmental hazard.

But it is equally clear that a new bridge is needed, The Ambassador has narrow lanes, no shoulders and is wearing out.

Traffic flow, which has been down because of the recession, is beginning to pick up. Bill Shreck, communications director for the Michigan Department of Transportation, noted that this is the “busiest and most important border crossing in America.”

There are four bridges between Niagara Falls and Buffalo. New York. If anything were to happen to the Ambassador Bridge, the economies of both Michigan and Ontario would be swiftly devastated.

Fortunately, there is a backup plan: For years, a group called the Detroit International River Crossing, or DRIC, has worked on a plan to build a second bridge across the rover, about two miles south of the Ambassador. This would be a publicly owned bridge, jointly supervised and inspected by the governments of both nations.

But, as I understand it, private investors would be welcome to invest in the new DRIC bridge as well, probably by buying bonds. Remarkably, this plan has the backing of just about everybody across the spectrum. Former Governors John Engler and James Blanchard favor the DRIC bridge. So does liberal Jennifer Granholm and the staunchly conservative Oakland County executive, L. Brooks Patterson. The Michigan Department of Transportation supports it, as do the governments of the United States and Canada.

Additionally, this proposed bridge has received environmental approvals from several agencies, including the Coast Guard.

But preliminary funding and approval has been held up by Mr. Moroun’s supporters in the Michigan Legislature, most notably Senator Alan Cropsey.

The last thing our state needs is someone risking our economic future for political games. The Coast Guard’s decision to cancel the Ambassador Bridge application ought to be seen as definitive.

We need a new bridge for international trade. It’s now clear that Mr. Moroun isn’t going to be allowed to construct one. Which means that it we don’t build it, prosperity isn’t going to come.

Essay: New Year - 1.4.10

As the state prepares for another challenging year… Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what a difference a decade can make…

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We’re already one percent into the year, so, Happy New Decade, everybody. Let’s think for a moment about what a difference a decade can make. Hard to believe now, but ten years ago we were all congratulating ourselves on having come through what some thought would be the biggest crisis of the decade, Y2K.

If you don’t remember, that was the nickname for what was seen as a potentially catastrophic worldwide computer problem.

Early computers only used two digits to indicate the year. Then one day, the experts started worrying about what would happen when the millennium flipped over, and we reached the year double-zero.

What if all our computer-operated institutions broke down? What if the robots in our auto factories went haywire, and Lansing dated all the state tax refunds 1900? We managed to scare ourselves half to death, with a giant assist from the media. In the end, nothing much happened, apart from a few tiny glitches.

Everyone had long since forgotten about Y2K by the time the real defining moment of the decade occurred less than two years later. Nobody predicted Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody now can predict when we will finally move beyond its aftereffects.

Yet it is worthwhile going back ten years, a period of time that can seem like both the blink of an eye and an eternity, to look at what has become of the State of Michigan in the decade gone by.

Ten years ago, our unemployment rate was an astonishingly low 4.1 percent - below the national average. Today, that figure is 14.7 percent, more than three times as high. Michigan has the highest jobless rate in the nation, as it has had for months.

Ford Motor Company was rolling in dough. So much cash, in fact, that it bought Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover for what turned out to be far more than those franchises were worth. General Motors was also swimming in profits; it had more revenues than any other company in the world. For awhile in 1999, it was viewed as the hottest stock on Wall Street.

Today, all that seems hard to believe, thanks to the near collapse of the domestic auto industry. Ten years ago, Michigan was the 18th highest state in terms of per capita income.

We’ve fallen to 37th now, meaning we are poorer than exactly two-thirds of the other states. We’re facing another grim year in Lansing, though things seem to have stabilized for the moment.

There’s general agreement that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. Our core industry has shriveled, and our state government has two major problems. First, it doesn’t seem to work very well, as last year’s year-long squabbles over the state budget show. Second, our present system doesn’t generate enough money to pay for what we want government to do.

What this means is that we need major structural reform, and we need it now. This is an election year, and we’ll be voting to fill every political job in Lansing. You’ll see a lot of campaign rhetoric, and more bickering over this year’s budget.

But what we need most is for our leaders to try to fix the deep-seated flaws in our system, if we have any hope for a prosperous future. I’ll be watching all year to see if they actually do this.

And most of all, I hope you will be watching too.

Essay: Labor Day - 9.7.09

These have been tough times for labor and the labor movement, especially in Michigan, where hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. On this Labor Day, Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is thinking about labor’s past and future…

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If the labor movement in Michigan has ghosts, I’d bet they spent today in Detroit’s Hart Plaza. That‘s where the Motor City’s annual majestic Labor Day parade always ends.

When the marching is over, the union faithful gather to be inspired by a succession of hopefully stirring speakers. Walter Reuther has spoken from that platform, as has Leonard Woodcock and Doug Fraser and a succession of labor giants.

But the best Labor Day rallies always came in election years. For decades, Democratic Presidential candidates formally kicked off their fall campaigns here, in Detroit, on Labor Day.

Harry Truman spoke here, giving the Republicans hell in a year when the pollsters all agreed he didn’t have a chance. The pictures of that event show a tightly packed sea of rapt faces that, in retrospect, ought to have made the pollsters think twice.

John F. Kennedy kicked off his campaign here, as did Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson. The tradition was broken for awhile, and for a few years they tried to replace the parade with something called “Laborfest” inside a football stadium.

But last year the tradition was revived when one of the biggest and most enthusiastic crowds in history came for the parade and stayed to hear that year’s nominee, Barack Obama.

Last November was a big victory for labor. This year, however has been a grim one, as unemployment has soared and the auto companies teetered on the brink of extinction.

Many good union jobs have been eliminated forever. Unions, which once represented more than a third of workers in the private sector, now represent no more than eight percent.

Whether you are a supporter of organized labor or not, it seems clear that unions haven’t figured out how to make themselves fully relevant in today’s high-tech economy.

Nor have they figured out how to win over most Americans’ sympathies. I received an e-mail last week from a Virginia outfit called “Union Free America,” which bragged that it knew how to get local unions decertified .

There are plenty of people in Michigan who are sympathetic. But this year there are hundreds of thousands who have no jobs, and others who are clinging to poorly paying jobs with dismal working conditions because they don’t know what else to do.

I have even heard some workers wondering how to get a union, because they think that might be their best shot at health care.

Michigan has had a proud labor tradition that began long before the auto industry. We had only been a state for a few months when our first strike broke out in 1837; Detroit’s carpenters wanted a raise to two dollars a day. Exactly a century later came the great sit-down strikes in Flint that heralded the rise of the UAW.

These days, it is common to say that labor is dead. As dead, in fact, as Harry Truman’s chances were the year he spoke to the Labor Day rally in Detroit. When the Secret Service woke him up the morning after the election to tell him the headlines were wrong and he had won, he said this: “Labor did it.“

What I would add is, “You never can tell.”

Essay: Time To Grow Up - 07.27.09

Speaker of the House Andy Dillon's plan to reform state employee health care drew an avalanche of criticism last week, but very few offers of anything better. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks it may be time for our lawmakers to grow up.

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Last week I talked about Speaker of the House Andy Dillon's suggestion that Michigan enact a single, uniform, statewide health plan for all government employees in that state.

What has surprised me since was the reaction, both to the plan and my suggestion that it might be worth thinking about.

Dillon's plan may not be the answer to our prayers, but is worth considering, if only because it is a serious attempt to do something about the state's runaway long-term costs.

For all I know, there may be better ways of organizing state employee health care than Andy Dillon's plan, and I would be happy to consider alternatives. But they haven't been forthcoming.

Instead, the plan has been cautiously supported by some lawmakers, mostly Republicans who want to cut costs, and Democrats like Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, who themselves have to meet a payroll and worry about balancing a budget.

But spokesmen for the Michigan Education Association have been overwhelmingly and nastily negative in attacking the plan.

That's fine. But have they offered any alternative? Not that I can see.

They want what they want because they want it. They want teachers to get the excellent health care benefits they have always had. I can sympathize with that. I wish everyone had Cadillac benefits and universal unlimited health care.

But the world is not as it was. Michigan is not as rich as it was, in large part due to the shrinking of the auto industry. State government doesn't have as much money coming in. Lansing is looking at vast deficits as far as the eye can see, and by law the budget has to be balanced every year.

The governor and the legislature are going to have a difficult time with that in the next couple years. Difficult, but they probably will be able to balance the books, thanks to remaining money from the federal stimulus package. But in two years, that will be all gone.

What do we do then? Andy Dillon is the only politician who has tried to address at least part of the state's long-term problem. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has been essentially negative about the Dillon plan, saying it doesn't do anything to help with the deficit this year.

Well, no, it doesn't. He is thinking about our state's future. We really are heading for the edge of a cliff. Within a couple of years, we could be living in a state that can't afford to fund its universities.

We may be looking at more government shutdowns, unless we do something to revamp the way the state gets and spends money. Dillon's approach may be flawed -- though it looks sensible to me.

But regardless, we need to start thinking long-term. There is an old Doonesbury comic strip that sums it up perfectly.

This came out at a point when the 1960s had been over for some time, though not all the characters had figured that out. Finally, one of them says, "The world needs grownups."

Michigan really needs grownups now, adults willing to plan for our state's long-term future. I don't know about you, but that sounds better to me than driving over a cliff.

Essay: New Ideas - 7.20.09

Health-care has been a big, national story for the past month. And, last week House Speaker Andy Dillon suggested a single, statewide health-care program for all government workers. He says the plan would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars. As Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry explains: some state Republicans seem open to the proposal, while Democrats seem less enthused…

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If you’ve been following what’s been going on in Lansing, you know we’re facing the budget crisis of all budget crises.

Our economy is in terrible shape, the worst in decades, with no relief in sight. Consequently, the state is taking in far less money every month than it counted on. We are looking at a two billion dollar deficit for next year, maybe even worse. For weeks, the legislature has been squabbling over what to cut and how much of the federal stimulus money to use. But none of that is a long-term solution.

Last week, a new, intelligent, thoroughly sensible idea was proposed by Speaker of the House Andy Dillon.

What was dismaying is that his idea was instantly attacked by the Michigan Education Association, the state’s main teachers’ union, which calls itself enlightened and progressive.

Here’s what happened. Dillon, a Democrat in his last term, proposed having a single, uniform, state-wide health care program for all public sector employees. Right now, there is a patchwork quilt of who knows how many different plans. This unnecessarily wastes tax dollars at a time when the state has no money to spare.

By combining all the various health plans, which now insure more than 400,000 people, plus retirees, the state would save a lot of money, partly from economies of scale. Dillon thinks the state could save as much as $900 million dollars a year. What’s more, he knows something about numbers; he is both an attorney and the former managing director of a major private equity capital firm.

What may seem odd about this is that while Dillon is a Democrat, his proposal has gotten fairly enthusiastic approval from Republicans like Mike Cox and business groups, like Detroit Renaissance and various chambers of commerce.

Normally a proposal like this would come from the executive branch, but the hard and non-partisan truth is that Michigan has the weakest governor the state has seen since World War II.

Governor Granholm did issue a statement about the Dillon plan that was incomprehensible gobbledy gook, probably deliberately so. Most unions were noncommittal, apart from the teachers‘ union, who basically indicated they weren’t even willing to think about it.

That head-in-the sand attitude on the part of the MEA indicates what’s wrong with politics in this state. This state has major, long-term money problems. If everyone is willing to think creatively, we may save more jobs in the short run, and save our state in the long run. But if we revert to our traditional petty, sectarian little corners, we will all suffer more in the long run than if we sacrifice now.

That’s not to say I am speaking as an advocate for the Dillon plan. But what I am saying, everybody in power knows. The state has to fundamentally change the way it does business, period, or we are headed for a meltdown and shutdown as early as 2011.

Speaker Dillon’s comprehensive health care proposal is the first serious attempt at a needed restructuring we’ve seen in years.

It deserves full, fair, and complete consideration.

After all, we have little time to lose.

Essay: Seaway Anniversary - 7.8.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is thinking about the birthday of the Saint Lawrence Seaway…

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You probably haven’t heard much about this, since Michael Jackson is still dead. But this summer is the 50th anniversary of something that has been both a great benefit and an environmental nightmare: The St. Lawrence Seaway. We don’t often think about it, but we should, because a couple of major decisions need to be made that will strongly affect our future, and that of the Seaway.

The bottom line is that the Seaway never lived up to its promise of being a passageway to economic growth. That’s not to say that it didn’t add something; it did, but never as much as promised.

However, the St. Lawrence Seaway also did something terrible that wasn’t foreseen at all. It led to the introduction of at least 57 invasive species into the Great Lakes, which have done horrible damage and changed the lakes ecology forever.

The most famous of these are the now-ubiquitous zebra mussels, which have clogged and choked water pipes and drains throughout the Great Lakes. There are also junk fish like the round goby, which drive out native fish species, and many other parasites, like the virus that causes fish to bleed to death.

In a way, it is unfair to blame the Seaway for invasive species; we have only ourselves to blame. We discovered early on that these things were coming over in the ballast water of ocean-going ships. Pretty much all we needed to do was insist they meticulously flush their ballast tanks before entering the seaway. Former State Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema had an even better idea: Make the ships add chlorine to their ballast water.

But environmentalists opposed Sikkema’s idea, and lobbyists didn’t want to make commerce any more expensive. Ships‘ ballast water was exempted from regulation by the Clean Water Act of 1972. Later, when Congress passed laws requiring ships to flush their ballast tanks, those laws weren‘t enforced by the Coast Guard.

The result was an ecological nightmare.

Ironically, the St. Lawrence Seaway never lived up to its economic potential either. When it was formally opened, it was heralded as one of the wonders of the world. It was expected to carry 50 million tons of cargo each year. But that never happened.

Thirty years ago, traffic on the seaway peaked at 23 million tons -- less than half that. Since then, traffic has dwindled. Nowadays, less than 10 million tons a year pass through the locks. True, the seaway did help the Midwest join the global economy.

But it could be carrying a lot more cargo. Marcy Kaptur, the longtime congresswoman from Toledo, thinks she has an answer. Modern oceangoing ships are bigger than in 1959 -- many just too big for the Seaway. She’d like to see our government and Canada’s spend billions to widen and deepen the locks.

That’s a proposal worth examining, but only if there is ample evidence it would pay off. And nobody should support any Seaway bill that doesn’t add strong new measures against invasive species. The Great Lakes are the most important source of fresh water this nation has. If we ruin them, we will be finished.

Let’s try not to forget that.