Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Macomb County - 4/30/07

Macomb has long been sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of Michigan counties; too often, it don’t get no respect.

That’s unfortunate, and to a large degree unfair. Macomb has been the fastest growing county in Michigan this decade. It now has about 840,000 people. That’s considerably more people than live in Vermont, Wyoming, or either of the Dakotas.

Macomb County was farm country until after World War II, when the great suburban explosion and expansion came. But for a number of reasons, professional workers tended to move northwest out of Detroit, to Oakland County.

Blue-collar workers tended to move northeast, to Macomb. Warren was the fastest growing city in America in the 1950s.

Macomb became the land of tool and die shops, and marinas on Lake St. Clair. For a brief time in the 1980s, Macomb County became nationally famous as the home of the so-called Reagan Democrats. The national media flocked to Warren to interview lunch-bucket types who wore hard hats, worked on the line, and had started to vote Republican for President.

The spotlight was on Macomb County because, back in 1960, it had been the most Democratic suburban county in the nation, voting almost two to one for John F. Kennedy, who narrowly won Michigan that year.

That was back when people largely voted by class, and the white ethnic and mainly Roman Catholic residents of Macomb no more thought of voting Republican than of buying a Japanese car. Of course, there weren’t any Japanese cars then.

Journalists focused on the changing voters in Macomb in the 80s as a way of illustrating the very real problems Democrats were having with some of their traditional voters. But there was always something condescending in the coverage.

There was always the implication that many of these blue collar Reagan voters were selfish, anti-intellectual, and racist. That was never completely true. But what remains true is that Macomb is a county without a four-year university. Michigan is a state where the number of residents without college degrees is significantly behind the national average. And the number of Macomb residents without degrees is significantly below the Michigan average.

So does Macomb County need a new college capable of granting four-year degrees? I am not sure it does.

That is, I am not sure that Michigan needs to create another institution with all its layers of bureaucracy.

What Macomb residents certainly do need is more access to higher education. If we have a U of M Flint and a U of M Dearborn, wouldn’t it make sense to have a U of M Macomb?

Maybe we should expand nearby Oakland University‘s mission, and to have a renamed school vigorously service both counties.

There are other possible solutions. We need to get going on some of them soon. But what I do know is that the emphasis should be on fulfilling needs, not building fiefdoms. If we can get that done, Macomb may even be happy to see the national media come back.

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Interview: Chuck Wilbur - 4/30/07

Does Macomb County need its own full-fledged university that could grant complete college degrees? A panel on higher education appointed by the governor concluded in a report that it does. Chuck Wilbur is the governor’s education advisor. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about the idea.

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Essay: State of Journalism - 4/27/07

State government is, by far, the government that most affects the lives of most people. Most federal programs are run through the states these days. Local governments are all creations of the state, and are drastically affected by decisions made in Lansing.

In fact, what is happening in Lansing is probably more important now than ever. Our state is now wrestling with an agonizing budget crisis and a deadlock in the legislature over what to do about it. The state does not have enough money to do what it has promised to do. And unless something changes, things will get worse for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the ten million people of Michigan are looking to Lansing for help making decisions to face that future. We have to decide whether we want to pay higher taxes or get used to a state with drastically reduced services, or a combination of both.

That’s a decision our elected leaders have to make right now. Then we have to figure out our business tax structure, and what we can do to make this a state that will attract new industries and jobs.  Everyone in this state needs to know where we are with these things. We need to know what our elected leaders are doing and thinking about doing. Lansing has probably never been a bigger or more important story. Yet you wouldn’t know that from our news outlets. Newspapers are a for-profit business. But most of the respectable ones have traditionally have felt they had a sacred calling to inform the public. “Give light,” in the words of the old Scripps-Howard newspaper motto, “and the people will find their own way.“

These days, however, it is a light that is failing. The Booth  group of medium-sized papers in eight mid-Michigan cities has long done solid and reliable journalism. I don’t know precisely why they are closing their Lansing bureau, except that money is surely involved. I do know that this is a terrible thing.

Most people in Michigan are only dimly aware of the severe budget crisis facing state government, or the vast economic crisis facing all of Michigan. A lot more of them know who fathered Anna Nicole Smith’s baby, or how and why a woman in Macomb County was gruesomely murdered in February.

The odds are pretty good that none of us are likely to be dismembered by our mates. But everyone of us is affected by what is happening in Lansing right now. Here’s something that I find interesting. When the Detroit News had a dozen reporters in Lansing, it had more than three times the subscribers it does now.

Last year ABC News picked a serious journalist in his 60s to anchor its nightly news, and he’s beating the stylish pants off the perky young anchors he is up against.  Maybe, just maybe, people really do want to know what matters. Before our civilization collapses, our media might just want to give it a try.      

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Interview: Ben Burns - 4/27/07

It’s clear that a large part of Michigan’s future will be closely tied to the decisions state government is going to make. Yet more and more media have cut back on state capital coverage. Earlier this week, the eight-newspaper Booth group announced it was closing its Lansing bureau. Ben Burns directs the journalism program at Wayne State and is a former executive editor of the Detroit News.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Best Politicians We Can Buy - 4/26/07

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” a now-forgotten California legislator once said. These days, milk money just won’t do it. Today, it costs what would once have seemed astronomical sums to run for even the lowest-level offices.

There were several seats in the Michigan legislature last year in which the winning and losing candidates each spent more than a million dollars. That’s for a job that lasts two to four years.

Running for governor or senator will cost you more -- a lot more. That doesn’t mean the candidate who spends the most always wins. Dick DeVos can tell you all about that. His campaign outspent Jennifer Granholm’s by three to one, and lost badly.

But she still spent something like $15 million dollars, or more than twenty times what she will earn in salary during her term.

The major party candidates for U.S. Senate also dropped millions down the memory hole. But all these races are merely warm-up acts for the biggest enchilada of them all: The presidency.

Those in the know say that this will be the first billion-dollar presidential campaign. My guess is that it will turn out to be more. As of the end of March, the top six candidates had raised something like $125 million dollars. That doesn’t even count so-called “soft” money, like the $1.4 million the Commonwealth Political Action Committee, or PAC, raised for Romney in Michigan.

And all this was more than a year and a half before the main event. So is this the way we want to elect a president?

Well, it’s the way we have been doing it for years. There are people who would argue that like it or not, there is nothing anybody can do about it. We are entitled to freedom of speech.

Americans with money are entitled to put it where their mouths and convictions are. Yet there are also those who call this corruption.

The problem with politics today is the “golden rule,” a student once told me. Those that have the gold, make the rules.

There are no easy solutions for this, but I think I have a partial one. Take television out of the equation. The airwaves are public property, like the national parks, and the Federal Communications Commission has every right to insist on public service programming.

What we should do is furnish an identical amount of television time to each serious candidate to make their case to the voters. We would have to agree on a definition of serious candidate -- perhaps anyone registering five percent in the polls -- but it could be done.

Television would be compensated by the taxpayers. The candidates would not be allowed to use this time to bash their rivals, but would be required to make the case for themselves.

That might not be a perfect solution, but could go a long way towards helping us make intelligent and well-informed choices.

Give it some thought.

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Interview: Saul Anuzis - 4/26/07

The presidential election may be a year from now, but the candidates are already raising money in Michigan, big time. And so far, the candidates winning the money game aren’t the ones at the top of the polls. Saul Anuzis is Michigan Republican chairman. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Term Limits - 4/25/07

Here’s an idea. I think we should have term limits for brain surgeons. They can operate for six years, and then they have to give it up and be lobbyists for medical supply companies.

Sound crazy? Not any crazier than term limits for state legislators. Yes, brain surgery is a delicate skill of enormous complexity. But so is running a modern state, and making laws for ten million very diverse people. In one way, brain surgery may even be easier; you are only dealing with one person at a time.

The art of governing not only involves understanding many complex issues, but something even harder: The art of getting large numbers of human beings to pull in the same direction, sometimes even when that may not be in their short-term interest.

Learning how to do that takes years. There are 148 people in the Michigan legislature. It is certainly essential to have some new people with fresh ideas. But you also need people in government who have been there a while, and have gotten us out of jams before.

You need some people for whom government at this level is a career. People who may have passionate beliefs -- but who understand that those who disagree may be partly right too.

Most of all, you need people who know that what matters at the end of the day is all of us. Term limits have largely destroyed that.

Consider this. State Senator Mike Bishop is in his early 40s. He has a wife and two kids, and has been in the state senate four years. In less than four years from now, he has to give up his job and can never run for it again. He has to have an eye out for his next job.

He may not be able to afford to do statesman-like things even if necessary. Bishop also has to satisfy those in his caucus. And Republicans in the legislature are considerably more conservative than most Michiganders, as Democrats are more liberal.

Why is this? Because they were all nominated by primary voters in a process that gives more weight to each extreme. Most of them were also elected from overwhelmingly one party districts.

That means that most lawmakers don’t have to worry about appealing to moderate voters at all.

Eighty-five percent of them need only worry about appeasing the most extreme voters in their own party.

Add to that the effects of inexperience and ideological blinders. And that nobody can stay long enough to be held responsible for bad decisions made on their watch.

And all that adds up to what is happening now.

By the way -- we forgot something when we enacted term limits. We had term limits to begin with -- the fitting and proper kind.

We’ve had them since the country was founded. We’ve used them to get rid of many a politician, from President to precinct delegate. There is a special name for them, too.

They are called elections.

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Interview: Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson 4/25/07

The Michigan Legislature has been deadlocked for months over how to resolve a worsening budget crisis. Many longtime observers think term limits are a big part of the problem. Wayne State Professor Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson has been studying the effects of term limits right from the start. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with her.

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Essay: Primary Focus - 4/24/07

Michigan has long been one of the most politically progressive states in the country. But we’ve had a hard time getting presidential primaries right. The first time we tried, back in the progressive era, voters showed a baffling tendency to cross party lines or write in Henry Ford, who many figured had done more for the state than any politician had. The politicians then did away with primaries.

But disenchanted young voters, mostly Democrats, demanded a say after they felt party bosses ignored the voters’ wishes in the bruising year of 1968. Michigan moved to a primary system in 1972, and for the Democrats, it turned out to be disaster.

The election was held the day after segregationist George Wallace was nearly killed in an assassination attempt.

Republicans had essentially no contest, and Wallace won an enormous landslide in a huge sympathy turnout. The liberals who ran the party establishment were humiliated. The primary worked well for both parties in 1976, but Democrats thereafter abandoned it.

They chose their delegates in 1980 through a caucus system so complex that few voters took part and almost no one understood it.

Eight years later, Jesse Jackson supporters did figure it out, and by shrewd stealthy planning, won the Michigan caucuses easily.

That drove Democrats back to a primary in 1992– which again worked well, helping to nominate Bill Clinton. But then they abandoned it once more. They went back to a modified caucus system in which presidential delegates are elected by those few voters who can figure out where they should show up on a Saturday afternoon.

Republicans had their own turn at being embarrassed in 2000, when John McCain easily won the primary here. The party establishment was overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.

But many Democrats and independents liked McCain better, and crossed party lines to vote for him. Last time, neither party wanted a primary. So the legislature suspended the law that called for one. Now, both parties are scrambling to decide what to do.

What they should do is clear. Each party should have a presidential primary on the same day. All Michiganders should be able to vote in either, but not both. That would solve the so-called sabotage problem. I know, however, that some party bosses won’t be happy.

They want only hundred percent loyalists to select their delegates. Trouble is, most of us in Michigan are independent cusses. Sixty-two percent of us voted for conservative Republican Gov. John Engler when he ran for re-election in 1998.

Four years later, sixty-one percent of us voted for liberal Democrat Carl Levin for the U.S. Senate. We like to change our minds. John Dingell’s wife Debbie used to be a Republican. Republican Chairman Saul Anuzis’ family backed Jimmy Carter in 1976.

And that’s fine. This is a free country. Let the voters decide, let the chips fall where they may, and just remember that if you don’t vote – and sadly, most of us won’t -- you really shouldn’t complain.

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Interview: Mark Brewer - 4/24/07

Hard to believe now, but the major party presidential nominations are likely to be settled as early as February 5th. That’s when more than half of both parties’ convention delegates are likely to be chosen in what amounts to the nation’s first national primary. Michigan Republicans will vote that day. But Democrats aren’t sure. Mark Brewer is the state Democrats’ longtime chair. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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