Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Priming the Pump - 5/31/06

I will be totally thrilled if David Hollister manages to use his $15 million federal grant to jump-start the mid-Michigan economy.

Perhaps his non-profit organization, Prima Civitas, will give a few thousand to someone who will use it as seed money to start something that will be as important to this century’s Michigan economy as General Motors was to Michigan’s last century.

But I don’t believe it for a moment. His grant is so small, and he intends to spread it out among so many far-flung groups that I can’t believe it will have much economic impact. Other groups have been trying to do similar things for years. Occasionally, they have led to some small business success, but nothing major, far-reaching, or world-changing.

They haven’t, and they won’t, because they can’t. The bureaucrats running the government programs don’t have enough money to really get something major going. And given that they see themselves as responsible stewards of the people’s money, they are unlikely to fund any venture crazy enough to change the world.

“Let me get this straight, Mr. Ford. You think you can make a horseless carriage cheap enough so every man can have one, and you want us to give you money to do it? We don’t think so.” Or, “so you dropped out of college, Mr. Gates, and now you want to make stuff for computers, and you want the taxpayers to fund you and not some engineers with Ph.Ds?

Unfortunately, the days of the lone inventor changing the world from his basement laboratory are probably gone. And as far as I can see, our corporate leadership is too set in its ways to make real changes.

Now I need to give you fair warning. If you are a devotee of the free market religion, you may now want to switch off the dial.

Because I am about to say what may be the dirtiest words ever uttered on public radio: We need big government.

That’s right. Michigan needs an industrial policy. We need to have a summit meeting of our top leadership and make rational, informed decisions that our future belongs in biotech -- or making hammocks out of burlap, if that makes more sense.

And then go for whatever makes the most sense, big-time. The state needs to pour billions into priming the pump. We need to knock down whatever legal barriers exist and mobilize our financial, technical and academic communities to get it done.

That sounds like heresy, right? Everyone says government can’t do anything efficiently or well. Well, everyone is wrong.

Think of the Manhattan Project, in which an entire secret city was built for the purpose of inventing and making an atomic bomb. Think of the space program – we went from nothing to the moon in barely a decade, thanks to a massive government program.

That’s what Michigan needs, now. Years ago, old George Romney gave a new governor of Michigan just two words of advice:

Be bold. When it comes to reinventing our economy, that’s the spirit we need today.

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Interview: David Hollister - 5/31/06

The Mackinac Policy Conference gets underway today. A lot of the sessions focus on the region near Detroit, but other parts of the state are facing economic challenges as well. Former Lansing mayor David Hollister is trying to find a way to help out the economy of mid-Michigan. He is now head of the new Prima Civitas foundation. It’s trying to create jobs by helping workers develop new skills and by building ties between the private sector and state universities. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke to him.

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Essay: Somewhere Up There - 5/30/06

Laugh if you want to, but I have always felt that the Upper Peninsula should have some special status in the Michigan Constitution, something like a semi-autonomous republic. For it really is a land apart. Parts of the UP are closer to St. Louis than to Detroit. Snow starts most years in October, and often doesn’t vanish for good until late May or even early June.

Demographically it is vastly different. There are very few African-Americans, fewer Hispanics, and a whole lot of guys named Nels. Actually, there isn’t a whole lot of anybody. There are fewer people in the entire sprawling expanse of Upper Peninsula than there are in Washtenaw County.

The Upper Peninsula does have what is believed to be the world’s largest and perhaps oldest living thing, a giant fungus that lives under 37 acres of forest floor, and is perhaps 1,500 years old.

There used to be copper; there still is iron ore, though they have taken out more than a billion pounds of it, and there is lots of nature, spoiled, unspoiled -- and at risk thanks to sulfide mining.

Bart Stupak represents this entire area – and that’s less than half his district. He also has an enormous chunk of the lower peninsula extending more than halfway down the east side. That’s a lot of geography. If you chopped his district out of the mitten, the only finger not badly maimed would be the thumb.  Yet while the congressman who represents inner-city Detroit leases a car at taxpayer expense, Stupak doesn’t, though frankly, he might be able to justify a helicopter to get around his district.

However, he seems to be in touch with his flock; they vote for him in large numbers, even as they reject national and statewide Democrats. Two years ago, he ran twenty points ahead of John Kerry; four years ago, he ran even further ahead of Jennifer Granholm. The reason why seems to be simple.

Long ago, Stupak realized the ultimate truth that all politics are local. He was a policeman who later put himself through law school after being injured on the job, and got into politics. You won’t see him much away from his district, which is both a good thing and a bad one. The law says that every congressional district has to have the same number of people.

But I think the Upper Peninsula deserves a full-time advocate of its own. The lumber barons and the copper barons raped our northern peninsula way back when, and shipped the profits far away from where the ore was dug.

Today, the UP desperately needs a crash program to rebuild the economy, sort of a domestic mini-Marshall plan. And it needs a full-time advocate in Lansing.

  So here’s my proposal. Every candidate for governor has to pick a lieutenant governor from the other peninsula. That might at least raise Yooper consciousness in Lansing.

And if you think that’s a nutty idea … let me tell you about term limits.

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Interview: Bart Stupak - 5/30/06

Congressman Bart Stupak has one of the largest congressional districts in the country – his territory includes the entire Upper Peninsula and extends to Bay City – and is three times bigger than all New Jersey. This week, he’ll be among other Michigan Congressmen at the annual Mackinac Island policy conference.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about some of the challenges his district faces.

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Essay: Memorial Day - 5/29/06

There have been more than a million of us who died in all the wars our nation has fought, from Lexington and Concord to Fallujah. Some died in battle and some of disease. More than half of all the Americans lost in our wars died killing each other, in what some still call The War Between the States.

Not all were heroes. But most died very young. Many had never been kissed, never fathered a child, never really found out what they wanted to do with their lives.

Since Vietnam, Memorial Day has become politicized to some extent.  Those who opposed that war – or this war – tend to roll their eyes at military parades, or anything that seems to celebrate war.

Others give speeches claiming that Abraham Lincoln, say, would tell us to hang tough. But actually, the record shows that Lincoln may have been our Supreme Commander in the Civil War, but he was more bitterly against the Mexican War than Howard Dean was against Iraq, For decades, politicians of all stripes have sought to hijack Memorial Day for their own political purposes.

And that ought to be seen as totally wrong. War, Clausewitz said, is a continuation of diplomacy by other means. Actually, war marks a total failure of politics and diplomacy. We exist as a nation because, way back when, young men died for that idea. Whatever your politics, we are still here because others know we would die to defend what we have. Somebody is standing along a border somewhere right now, defending your right to play softball and eat potato salad today.

We have been very lucky in our wars. We have lost fewer men and less property than almost any other nation. The Russians lost more men in the single battle of Stalingrad than we have lost in all our wars since the beginning of time.

Four hundred thousand Americans died in World War II, mostly in Europe. But twenty-seven million Russians died. I have seen their cemeteries, and young children guarding them with loaded weapons.

Nobody wants war, our politicians like to say. Well, somebody must, because wars keep happening. We ought to go out today and stroll among the graves, and wonder what these men would have done and who they would have become.

Today, by the way, would have been the 89th birthday of one of those World War II veterans, who was injured when his boat was sunk; he towed a badly burned shipmate through the water for miles.

Eventually they were saved. His older brother volunteered for a secret mission to destroy Nazi missiles.

That mission failed, and the man died, and the younger brother had to go after the job his father wanted the dead son to have.

The surviving son’s name was John F. Kennedy. When they buried him, what his wife said might apply to all the veterans today:“Now he is a myth when he would rather have been a man.”

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Interview: Mike Sand - 5/29/06

Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day and was started to honor the Civil War dead.  But in time, it evolved into a holiday meant to honor the dead of all wars.  Michael Sands is a high school teacher and a Vietnam Vet.  He was instrumental in getting Michigan’s Vietnam Memorial built in Lansing.  Michgian Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about attitudes toward veterans and Memorial Day.

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Essay: Expanding the Region - 5/26/06

Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis gets it, in a way most people who live in Michigan don’t.  Legally, that is indeed a different country there across the Detroit River, with pastel-colored money and a maple leaf flag. Economically and socially, we are all part of the same region.

We ignore that at our peril. Canadians don’t really have that luxury; they are a mouse in bed with an elephant, as one of their columnists once said. They need to pay attention to when the elephant is rolling over. Yet Ontario and Michigan are more like conjoined twins. Their two economies are hugely entwined.

That has especially been the case since the U.S. Canada and North American Free Trade Agreements.

But things have changed since September 11. We’ve become paranoid about international borders and security. Part of the problem was due to newspaper story – totally false -- that claimed that some of the hijackers came into this country through Canada.

Though that was proven wrong long ago, it is still sometimes cited as fact – and has contributed to an atmosphere of distrust. That’s why you sometimes see trucks backed up for hours waiting to cross the Ambassador Bridge. Windsor has even had to put portable restrooms for the truckers on some residential streets.

These are all problems that affect everyone in the region. And yet, it too often seems like we treat Canada the way medieval cartographers used to treat lands they knew nothing about. They left big white spaces on the maps, and sometimes wrote in them, “Here be lions.”  Eddie Francis is sort of a young lion in his own right; he was born soon after his parents arrived in Canada from Lebanon. His story could be quintessentially American.

His father, a jeweler in the old country, started a pita bread business here. Eddie, who speaks fluent English, French and Arabic, earned an honors degree in biochemistry; then went to law school. While nailing down his law degree, he became the youngest city councilman in Windsor’s history. He married a doctor, and got  elected mayor, when he was 29 years old.

Bear in mind that Windsor isn’t a charming boutique town, but an industrial city considerably larger than Grand Rapids, and entirely intertwined with Metropolitan Detroit. And something is about to happen that threatens all of us. As it now stands, on Dec. 31, 2007, the United States will start requiring everyone to have a passport to cross the border, even just for lunch.

That might make seem to make sense if you are a congressman from someplace a long way from Canada. But 80 percent of Americans don’t have passports. This would be disastrous for the economy of the entire Great Lakes region.

By the way, Mohammed Atta and his fellow terrorists wouldn’t have had any problems crossing the border; they all had passports.

Whatever else Mayor Francis plans to do at Mackinac, I hope he spends some time trying to get our congressmen to help stop this very bad idea.                                                   

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Interview: Eddie Francis - 5/26/06

As the youngest mayor of an industrial city on the Detroit River, he has to deal with everything from crime to the sagging economy. But if you think his name is Kwame Kilpatrick, you are wrong. Eddie Francis became Windsor’s mayor almost three years ago, when he was 29 years old. This week, he’ll be traveling to Mackinac for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s annual policy conference. Michgian Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Climate Controlled - 5/25/06

There is a character in a Kurt Vonnegut novel who is with other soldiers in a wretched Nazi prison camp. “You think this is bad? This ain’t so bad,” he says, every time things get worse. He only stops saying that … after he freezes to death. That’s the first thing that came to mind when I learned that Michigan had actually turned down money that could be used to help control our climate here.

Now I am not any big environmentalist. I burn fossil fuels and run central air. But it is absolutely clear that global warming is a fact, and there are strange things happening with our climate. There was no snow where I live in February and almost no rain in April. And now, in late May, I am wearing a heavy coat to walk the dog early in the morning.

Yes, I know that throughout history there have been anomalies – 1816 was referred to in New England as the “year without a summer.”

But there has been too much weirdness for too long for anyone rational to deny that something is seriously out of whack. Besides, there is plenty of scientific evidence to prove it, starting with holes in the ozone layer. What’s clear is that we are indeed not like other animals.

We, unlike they, foul our own nests. And if we don’t reverse the process soon, we will likely do ourselves in, leaving behind, in the immortal words of Jonathan Schell, a republic of insects and grass.

However, I am not a scientist. I cannot tell you precisely what policies we need to adopt to try and save our environment before it is too late. Nor do I have much confidence that we can do much without fact-based, as opposed to faith-based, leadership in Washington.

But I am a teacher, and I can tell you some things about our problem child called Michigan. Years ago, he was close to the head of his class. Not perfect, but old Michigan was known for innovation, especially in technology. He built and established some first-rate universities – and funded them well. He got high marks in pay, benefits and health care, and seemed interested in building a future.

But sometime during the last couple decades, Michigan really seemed to lose sight of his major goals. Once, he put the slogan “water-winter wonderland” on his license plates. And a succession of leaders understood it was important to think about the future Michigan would have when new generations were on this land and we were planted in it.

Today, Michigan’s marks are slipping, and we too often act as if our slogan was “gimme another tax cut.”  We certainly need to do more in terms of climate protection, health care and education.

Most of all, however, we need an attitude adjustment. We are stewards of this state, and planet, and we aren’t doing our jobs very well. And if you really think what’s going on now “ain’t so bad” . . . you ain’t been paying attention.

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Interview: Barry Rabe - 5/25/06

It may sometimes seem like we are powerless to do much to save the planet.  But University of Michigan professor Barry Rabe has shown that individual states can play a major role in climate protection. For that, he has just won the Environmental Protection Association’s climate protection award. Michgian Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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