Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Electing the Supremes - 10/31/06

I have never been able to decide exactly how I feel about the way we choose judges in this state, which is by electing them. 

The average person doesn’t know what skills are needed on the bench. More importantly, most people don’t have the time needed to sort through the resumes and the qualifications of judicial candidates. A candidate for mayor can say, “vote for me and I’ll fix the streets.” Judicial candidates ethically can’t do that. So they are forced to use meaningless slogans like “Vote Jones for justice,” or “Judge White is just right.” 

Yet here’s the strongest argument for electing them: They may at some point be called on to judge … us. If I am going to be sent to the big house for a few years, I think my sentence should be passed by someone I had an opportunity to vote for – or against.

That seems more democratic than being sentenced by someone  appointed by a politician. If we have the right to face our accusers, we should also have a say in selecting those who might send us to jail.

But I can say that I totally oppose the way we select the justices for the Michigan Supreme Court, the highest court in our state.

Under the current rules, they are nominated by the political parties and are listed on the ballot as Republicans or Democrats.

That’s bad for a number of reasons. First of all, the Supreme Court is charged with supervising the entire state court system, as well as interpreting the laws in light of the Michigan Constitution.

Do you believe we should think in terms of partisan justice? I don’t, and I don’t think the framers of the current Michigan Constitution did either. But that document was written in 1961 and 1962, in an era before the country was as ideologically divided as it is now.

We now have a state supreme court that is more polarized than the U.S. Supreme Court – something that stands out constantly in their decisions and dissents. We have four partisan Republican justices and two Democrats. A seventh justice, Elizabeth Weaver, is also a Republican, but more independent.

And there is another problem. I also don’t think the framers realized that the political parties would use the state’s highest court as a retirement home for their washed-up politicians.

The Republicans put Robert Griffin on the state’s highest court after he was defeated for the U.S. Senate, and Jim Brickley after he lost a nomination for governor. Democrats did the same with Soapy Williams, after he lost a bid for the U.S. Senate, and with John Swainson, after he was defeated for re-election as governor.

We need two reforms. To start with, take the political party designation off judges’ names. And second, nominate only candidates who are judges, not politicians. If we are going to have a supreme court at all, we deserve to have one where justice really is supreme.

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Interview: John Lindstrom - 10/31/06

Election day is November 7th.  In addition to choosing politicians to represent us, we will also be electing a lot of judges, including two state supreme court justices.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with John Lindstrom of the Gongwer News Service.

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Essay: Voting in Detroit - 10/30/06

If you ever want proof that even the young Bobby Dylan was a true poet, listen to the song he wrote when civil rights leader Medgar Evers was ambushed and shot in the back on his front porch.

That was a huge event in the summer of 1963, a time when folk singers were in. Many wrote songs about the martyred Medgar Evers. Dylan did not. He wrote about the lower-class white man he presumed had killed him, a song he called “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” 

His song noted that no matter how badly the upper-classes exploited the poor whites, they could tell them “you’ve got more than the blacks, don’t complain.” And, Dylan might have added, when things went wrong, the poor whites could always blame the blacks for all their troubles, something very common since Reconstruction.

Today, our society may be less overtly racist. But it seems to me that we are worse than ever at refusing to take responsibility for our own actions.  I can say I am somewhat overweight, by the way, because restaurant portions are too large.

You really can’t blame me for eating too much and not exercising enough. You get the idea. So if I don’t get into the University of Michigan and some black kid does, it is clearly unfair. Especially if the other kid doesn’t have a better grade point than I do. (Never mind that he took a lot of physics courses in high school, and I took wood shop.)

Jennifer Gratz, the poster girl and titular leader of the forces seeking to outlaw affirmative action, strikes me as fairly typical of this kind of thinking. She was a fireman’s daughter, and a homecoming queen who had her heart set on the University of Michigan, but didn’t get immediately accepted. Some minority students did get in that year with slightly lower averages. Gratz never got over that.

She has been fighting affirmative action ever since. First she took it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she lost. Now, she is trying to outlaw affirmative action at the ballot box.

You certainly can’t say that she isn’t persistent. But ironically, she wasn’t persistent when it really mattered. Actually, she wasn’t rejected by the U of M. She was instead invited to put her name on a waiting list.

Everyone who was wait-listed and put their name on that year got in. There were, by the way, dozens of white students who had higher scores than Jennifer Gratz who also didn’t get accepted.

But she never put her name on the list. 

No, life isn’t fair.  If it were, there never would have been discrimination. If life was an equal playing field, Jennifer Gratz and I might both be dying of dysentery in the Central African Republic.

But I suspect a lot of people think the way she does. On election night, we’ll see if I am right.                                                                                                                                                                                          

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Interview: Michael Traugott - 10/30/06

Polls now show that the state is closely divided on Proposal 2, which would outlaw Affirmative Action for women and minorities in government hiring and university admissions. But otherwise reliable polls have sometimes been very unreliable in racially charged contests. University of Michigan Professor Michael Traugott has many years of experience in survey research.

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Essay: Helping Us Vote - 10/27/06

Here’s something to feel good about. Michigan has long had one of the cleanest and problem-free voting systems in the country.

And it’s getting even better. Everybody this fall will be voting on optical scan machines that leave an easily checked paper trail.

For all practical purposes, anyone in Michigan who wants an absentee ballot can get one. New equipment now makes it possible for virtually anyone, no matter how disabled, to preserve their privacy and vote by themselves, without any assistance.

And if you fall suddenly ill on Election Day, you can have somebody bring a ballot to the hospital.  That’s all good.

But here’s the distressing thing.  According to Chris Thomas, the state’s top election expert, less than half of Michigan’s registered voters are likely to vote in this election. That’s the case even though the state’s economy is universally agreed to be in deep crisis.

That’s the case even though control of Congress is at stake, and the ideological division between the parties is the greatest it has been since the New Deal. And that’s the case even though there are at least two major ballot proposals – affirmative action and education funding – which would have a major impact on our lives.

So if voters still aren’t sufficiently motivated to show up, do we really want to do much more to try and entice them?

Ideally, everyone should vote. But do we want people who are uninformed, ignorant, and who couldn’t care less deciding who should appoint our judges or how education should be funded? Someone close to me has a father who is gravely ill. Specialists are being consulted, but nobody is talking about giving the hospital custodial staff an equal vote on his treatment.

I have absolutely no problem with same-day registration. If you suddenly get interested in an election, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to cast your ballot.

On the other hand, I have some major problems with Oregon’s vote-by-mail system. I worry that it might enable a domineering spouse to forcibly dictate how their family members vote. I also worry that it might increase the potential for fraud.

What about early voting?  Part of me likes this idea a great deal. There are people who find it hard to get there on that particular day. Ironically, I have been one of them, especially when I was a reporter. Election Day was the hardest day for me to take time to stand in line.

Yet in a way, early voting is like opening your holiday presents early. And what if you vote Oct. 20 for Joe Blow, and then you learn on Oct. 30 that old Joe has been indicted for tax evasion?

You can’t take it back. I like my presents on Christmas, my World Series in October, and my elections the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Standing in line never killed anyone, and I hope to see you at the polls.                                                 

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Interview: Chris Thomas - 10/27/06

More than three million people will vote in next week’s midterm elections in Michigan. But hundreds of thousands will have voted days or weeks before via absentee ballot -- and many more could and possibly should do the same. Chris Thomas directs Michigan’s bureau of elections.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Nem, Nem Soha! - 10/26/06

I remember them from my childhood, the men in their weather- stained coats, men mostly with long gaunt faces, jet-black hair and eyes that burned like coal.

They were called Hungarian Freedom Fighters, and all I knew then was they were heroes who had somehow fought the evil Russian communists, and had to flee.

Many of them settled into Detroit’s Delray community and in Toledo, where large Hungarian communities already existed. I found them, their romantic history, and their strange agglutinative language fascinating. When I learned the real story of what had happened in 1956, it was far better than the sanitized Cold War version.

Hungarians are fighters. Tired of the oppression of one of the worst Stalinist regimes on the planet, the people rose up, spontaneously, unarmed people against the machine guns of the dreaded secret police. They overpowered their oppressors.

They fought for several days. Thousands died, but the oppressors were getting the worst of it. Then, in what seemed a dream come true, Imre Nagy, one of the first Communist leaders to have a human face, joined the revolution.

He said that Hungary would leave the Soviet bloc, be a neutral country, and try to build a better, more humane version of socialism. The people were ecstatic. For four days. And then came the massive invasion by the full weight of the Soviet armed forces.

They did not have a chance. We now know that the Russians lost ten times as many men as they expected to. The Hungarians held the borders open long enough for something like 200,000 to flee. The Soviets and their puppets caught and executed Imre Hagy.

Before he died, he said this. “I know there will be another trial, at which I will be rehabilitated. I also know there will be a reburial.”

Thirty years later, I went to Hungary. Nagy was buried in an unmarked grave. Nobody was supposed to know where it was, though they showed it to me. Almost every night, some one put flowers on it. The Russians respected Hungary more than most of the satellites; allowed them more freedom. Is 1956 now ancient history, I asked one woman? 

Nem, she said. Nem nem soha.

No, no, never. 

And then came glasnost. And Imre Nagy was rehabilitated, and reburied with great honor. And Hungary opened its borders with Austria. East Germans, who could travel throughout the Communist bloc, went through to West Germany.

Their leaders demanded Hungary close the border. The Hungarians said no. East Germany demanded the Soviet Union do something. Mikhail Gorbachev said. No. Never. Not any more.

Listen to the streets, he told the shocked East German dictator. And then his people indeed took to the streets, and the Berlin Wall opened.

And within months, the whole rotten structure of European Communism came crashing down.

In a very real sense, that all started fifty years ago this week. And Hungarians everywhere have a lot they can be proud about.

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Interview: Joe Enyedi - 10/26/06

Fifty years ago this week, in one of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War, the citizens of Budapest rose up against their oppressive Communist rulers, and their Soviet masters. They actually had several days of independence before the full might of the Soviet forces returned.  Nearly 40,000 refugees came to America -- many of them to Michigan, where they built new lives. Joe Enyedi is one of those.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Enterprise Zone - 10/25/06

There is a school of thought that believes entrepreneurs base all their business decisions on taxes. Lower taxes, and business will move in. Raise them, and business will move away.

This is firmly believed, for example, by many Republican politicians, who used to talk fervently about what they called the “Laffer Curve.” That’s something economist Arthur Laffer supposedly sketched on a napkin during a 1974 meeting with Dick Cheney.

The Laffer curve says the more you raise taxes beyond a certain point, the less the government actually collects.  Why? Because when people feel taxes are too burdensome, they stop working or move away.

Laffer curve theorists firmly believe that if you lower taxes, it will stimulate economic activity so much that the government will actually take in more money. All you have to do is find the right low level.

The most famous disciple of that theory was Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the huge tax cuts he got through Congress didn’t pay off as fast as he thought, which meant record deficits.

Thinking like this is behind the concept of Renaissance zones. The idea is to lure businesses to come into an economically depressed area by suspending most or all taxes for a number of years.

The theory is that this will draw jobs to the area, that spinoff businesses and industries will follow, housing will be built or rehabbed, and before long the area won’t be blighted any more. Eventually, the neighborhood will be able to make it on its own without tax breaks.  That’s a beautiful dream, but as far as I can tell, it hasn’t worked. Experts say the results aren’t definitive, but if Michigan’s renaissance zones had produced any kind of economic boom, you can bet we would have heard lots about it by now.

Here’s what I think. The entire concept is fundamentally flawed.  Lower tax rates are no longer the main issue that determines where companies locate. Quality of life issues are much more important.

Sure. Let’s say my choice is between two pleasant similar suburbs – Mason or Okemos, say. If one gives me a massive tax break, I may well locate there. But I wouldn’t move my firm to Highland Park, no matter what. The schools are dysfunctional, the streets are a mess, the city is broke, and there is not adequate police protection.

Plus, after years of neglect, the place is an eyesore. The fact is that while nobody likes to pay excessive taxes.  Western Michigan University sponsored a recent survey to determine just what attracts wave-of-the-future, new economy jobs.

It found that two of the highest tax states, California and Massachusetts, were doing the best. Employers wanted an educated work force and a pleasant environment.

That means services. Schools. Litter picked up. Police who come right away if you need them. Those are all things paid for by taxes, and taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. If we spend the money to build it, they will come.

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Interview: Tim Bartik - 10/25/06

A decade ago, there was great excitement when the state set up tax-free Renaissance zones as a spur to economic development. But ten years later, how have things worked out? Timothy Bartik is a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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