Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: The State We Are In - 1/24/07

There was an air of unreality, I thought, about the first half of President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night. Either that, or I was watching the President in some alternate reality world.

He talked about how well the economy was going, something that is news to all of us in Michigan. We’ve had months --years, really -- of job losses in our incredibly shrinking auto industry. Pfizer’s stunning announcement Monday that it would eliminate thousands of life sciences jobs came like a blow falling on a bruise.

But what was oddest was how much time went by before the President got down to addressing the elephant in the room.

Before, that is, he mentioned the issue that had lost his party control of Congress, and turned the vast majority of the American people against him. I’m talking, of course, about the war in Iraq.

The President did not seem to win any converts last night for his decision to make one last attempt to pour in more American troops to try to win by escalating the violence.

There will be plenty of discussion on this network and in the nation’s newspapers as to whether his policies are right or wrong.

What amazed me was that he took so long to address the war. I thought that he would have found it necessary to confront it, head-on, to say to the people, look: We are in a difficult jam.

I have made this controversial decision, I believe it to be right, and I ask for your support.

And then he could have said something along the lines of, “but meanwhile, the well-being of the American people require we do these other things -- and laid out his domestic policy agenda.

What I am about to say may sound a little unfair, but what I saw  last night reminded me a little bit of a story President Ford told about Richard Nixon’s last cabinet meeting three days before he resigned.

The “smoking gun” tape proving Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate coverup had just been released.  Nixon convened a tension-filled cabinet which waited to hear what he would do.

Nixon said, “I want to address the most important issue confronting the nation. Inflation.”

Ford and the other cabinet members stared, unbelieving. Nixon proposed a summit conference to tackle inflation. Finally, Vice-President Ford spoke up, changed the subject, and said he couldn’t defend Nixon any more. The attorney general spoke up and said that he thought Nixon no longer had the authority to govern.

When the meeting was over, even Nixon recognized that his presidency was over too. President Bush is not, of course, in anything like the same boat. But Iraq seems increasingly to be becoming virtually the only topic in the national conversation.

And when you consider all the other problems we are facing, especially perhaps here in Michigan -- that is both scary, and bad.       

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Interview: Vern Ehlers - 1/24/07

President George Bush focused heavily on the domestic economy in his State of the Union speech last night -- but some of his prescriptions may not be too popular in Michigan. He called for a dramatic increase in fuel economy standards and the use of less oil. Representative Vern Ehlers is a Republican from Grand Rapids.  He’s one of only two congressmen who have a PhD in physics.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Taxing Matters - 1/23/07

This month, Governor Jennifer Granholm appointed a panel of wise men and women to advise her on what to do about the state fiscal crisis. The panel is about as blue-ribbon as you can imagine.

Former governors Bill Milliken and Jim Blanchard are on it. So is Frank Kelley, who was Michigan’s attorney general for 38 years. There are university presidents and former legislators of both parties, one of whom is a top official of DTE Energy. There is a former state treasurer and a Republican congressman who is a noted budget expert.

Sounds like exactly the sort of panel you would want in a case like this. Yet oddly, the governor has been attacked over the panel’s makeup. She is being charged with selecting a group that will do what she secretly wants to do and recommend a tax increase.

Whenever I hear that charge, I think what is most interesting is what it says about the person making it.  To the best of my knowledge, Jennifer Granholm hasn’t breathed a word about a tax increase.

Nor is any member of the advisory panel running around calling for more taxes. In fact, Jim Blanchard was politically damaged when he called for a tax increase when he was governor. So . . . why do so many people assume this governor will propose a tax increase? Simple. Because anyone who really knows anything about the state’s crisis knows that it needs more revenue.

Anyone who thinks the state can miraculously get its finances in over by kicking welfare queens off assistance, or turning off unused lights in the capitol, doesn’t know what they are talking about.

Yes, you could balance the budget without raising taxes, as long as you are willing to close the prisons and turn the convicts loose. You could abolish Medicaid, or end all support for higher education. v Those are solutions, all right -- nonsense solutions, along the lines of solving your need for shoes by cutting off your feet. I have yet to hear anyone who opposes a tax increase offer a sensible plan.

Mostly, they just mouth anti-government nonsense statements like “starve the beast.” Yes, she could have put somebody on that panel whose mind is closed to any tax increase.

But what good would that do?  Sometimes when somebody needs a risky operation, hospitals sometimes put together an emergency advisory panel of doctors to try and figure out what to do.

They don’t normally pull in the janitor, or add a proctologist to a case involving a brain tumor.  This time, the governor knows what she is doing.  At the end of day, it will be Jennifer Granholm, not any of her advisors, who will recommend whatever she recommends. Then it will be up to her, the legislators and us to accept it, reject it, or come up with something else. But till then, it is her show.

And the vast majority of us voted last fall to let her keep it running.

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Interview: Bill Ballenger - 1/23/07

Two weeks ago, Governor Jennifer Granholm appointed a bipartisan Emergency Financial Advisory Panel to make recommendations on the state fiscal crisis by the end of the month.  But is that enough time? And is this panel likely to come up with any truly innovative solutions?  Bill Ballenger, creator of the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, has been in Lansing for forty years and has seen a fiscal crisis or two.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Be It Ever So Humble - 1/22/07

Eleven years ago, my wife and I bought a house in a small enclave of nice older homes near the Detroit Zoo. The residents tend to be doctors, lawyers, professors and artists.

Back then, it was hard to buy a house there. We actually learned our place was coming on the market before it did.

Then, after we bid a hair OVER the asking price, we had to audition with the realtor, who was a longtime local fixture, to see if she thought we would fit into the community.

Somehow, we passed. We love our house. But if we had to sell it today, we’d have a hard time. There are houses in our neighborhood today that have had “for sale” signs up for months. Nor does it look like that will change anytime soon.

This does not greatly bother me, since I hope to stay there until I am donated to science. But if I were in a corporate job that wanted to transfer me to New Jersey, say, I’d be in trouble.

And if I were a young person without family money, I don’t know how I would be able to afford a home. According to the Center for Housing Policy, the average home today costs $248,000.

That would normally require an $85,000 down payment. True, with today’s poor housing market, some mortgage lenders are requiring smaller, and in a few cases almost no, down payment.

But covering a quarter-million dollar mortgage would mean payments of more than two thousand dollars a month. That’s just plain beyond the reach of many people.

Over Christmas, I saw a very bright former student of mine who is a TV reporter in North Dakota. She told me she just signed a new, two-year contact that gave her a raise.

She is now making $22,000 a year. I was tempted to ask her if she was living in a packing crate or in a cave. That’s an extreme case, but I know a lot of young college graduates who have been in the work force for a few years who aren’t making thirty thousand yet.

Here’s what I think may happen. We may return to the practice of an earlier era, where kids eventually took over the ancestral homestead. Many recent college graduates seem to be living with mom and dad anyway. This might actually work. Many middle-class people have only a kid or two. Thanks to travel, cell phones and the Internet, where you live is increasingly less relevant to many jobs.

Incidentally, I do own my own home, and I don’t have any kids. Which means that at the proper time, I may be in the market for an heir. Not yet, and hopefully, not for a good long time. But if you want to apply, be my guest. Just make sure you send a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and be prepared to answer this question.

How would you fit into the neighborhood?

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Interview: Jeffrey Lubell - 1/22/07

Since World War II, the traditional American Dream has at least included owning your own home. Yet a new study from the Center for Housing Policy confirms that is becoming harder and harder for more and more Americans to own or even rent a home.  Jeffrey Lubell is a housing policy analyst who runs the non-profit Center for Housing Policy.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Taxing Questions - 1/19/07

We seem to be in free fall. That’s what occurs to me when I look at preliminary projections for how much money the state is going to have this year to do the things that need doing.

We have a problem, and we need to think about it and figure it out together. Notice I have not used the words “budget”  or “fiscal”  or “revenue estimates.”  Terms like those are designed to make the mind wander back to thinking about how long Lindsay Lohan is likely to be in rehab. Michigan’s economy itself needs to be in rehab, and we need to get it there. First, however, we need to figure out how to get what we need to pay the bills this year.

You can make the argument that we need to cut expenses. Well, the state has been doing that pretty intently for the last four years. When your household money is tight, you don‘t make frivolous purchases. However, you don’t decide that to save money, you aren’t going to feed the baby for a year. 

Michigan has been in trouble before, in large part because of the cyclical nature of the auto industry.

But it is different now. The tide has gone way down. The state  will still  be affected by the ebb and flow of auto sales. But high tide will be far less high, and lots of us will still be high and dry.

But beyond that, the state is in its current state because of largely self-inflicted wounds. The non-profit, non-partisan, highly respected Citizens Research Council of Michigan, says that in the last few years: “The state reduced tax rates, failed to offset negative effects on state revenues created by federal tax changes, and cut other state taxes by excluding previously taxed items.” Politicians did those things because they knew they would be politically popular.

Yes, they knew a storm was brewing. But they didn’t want to take responsibility for the hard work of getting ready for it.

Term limits meant the politicians making those choices would be gone anyway. Well, we are still here. What happens now? We have a choice. We find a way to pay for what we need, or we can ruin the schools, turn convicts loose, and starve the state to the point of not being competitive. The governor needs to do something like a fireside chat. Nobody watches the state of the state speech except for journalists and policy wonks who can’t get a date.

Jennifer Granholm needs to appear on camera and simply explain how she proposes to solve this crisis.

And we need to watch. This is our state. We can’t all move to North Carolina, and those of us still here need t make the best of it.

Detroit‘s got a pretty good motto. Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus." We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.

Maybe the state of Michigan could borrow it for a while.

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Interview: Craig Thiel - 1/19/07

By law, Michigan has to hold a conference in January to estimate how much money the government is likely to take in so that the state can plan its budget. So far this year, the news has looked all bad. Craig Thiel is a fiscal analyst with the nonpartisan Citizens Research Council.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Juvenile Justice - 1/18/07

Nathaniel Abraham got to be famous a decade ago, when he became the youngest person in Michigan history to be tried as an adult for murder. What was unusual was that the killing took place when Nathaniel was 11 years old.

What I remember most about the trial was that the accused was so small his shoes didn’t touch the ground.  Nathaniel never even met the 18-year-old who he killed, a boy who died on the sidewalk with a bullet in his head and a bag full of white powder in his mouth.

I was asked to write a magazine story about the case. I decided I did not want to write about Nathaniel, who had attention deficit disorder and a mental age of somewhere between 7 and 9. What interested me more was his mother, who I took the time to get to know. Gloria Abraham, who lived in Pontiac, was not a bad person, a drug addict, or a very neglectful mother. She seemed to be a bit dreamy. She worked at night in a diagnostic lab labeling blood samples.

Nate’s dad had moved out of state. She had lived with another man for awhile, but he had died. There was no man to keep an eye on a rambunctious 11-year old when she was off at work.

Essentially, the streets got him. She thought her little boy was only idly shooting at tree branches. After he was sent away, I asked Gloria what she thought Nate might do after he was released.

She smiled sweetly and said that she thought she could see her son, who was small for his age, playing for the Detroit Lions.

What now, I wonder, are his chances of living what we, and he, would see as a successful and happy life? He has been locked up in what amounts to a maximum security prison since he 11.

Do you think it will be easy to find an employer to take a chance on him? What about the thousands of other Michigan children who pass through either the juvenile or the adult justice system every year?

The cost of keeping one of those children in the juvenile justice system is, if you can believe it, $170,000 dollars a year, I am not an expert by any means on social work. But anyone can see that for a small fraction of that, we could address many of these kids’ problems before they ever reach the justice system.

We don’t want to spend the money for that. We are more and more willing, however, to send children to adult maximum security prisons, where they can become hardened psychopaths. If the people making our juvenile justice policies aren’t suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder, they could have fooled me.     

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Interview: Rosemary Sarri - 1/18/07

Nathaniel Abraham made headlines nearly ten years ago when he became the youngest person in Michigan history to be convicted of murder. He was eleven years old at the time. But the judge refused to sentence him as an adult  He is 21 now, and a judge has orderd that he be released.   Rosemary Sarri, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, has spent years studying the juvenile justice system.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with her.

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