Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Automotive Meltdown - 2.27.09

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was sixteen years old. Unlike his brother, he wasn’t killed instantly, but lingered on for a little more than a day. Throughout the vigil, the press was given constant updates on his condition, which was critical from the start.

Late in the afternoon of that long day, however, there was a slight change. His press secretary began saying his condition was “extremely critical, as to life.” It was clear what that meant, even to my then-unsophisticated self. It meant he was going to die.

Fast forward forty-one years, when the stricken patient is General Motors. Here, in tortured English, is how the general’s press secretary put it yesterday:

“GM and its auditors must determine whether there is substantial doubt about GM’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

What that means is the equivalent of “extremely critical as to life.” It is time for the government and the industry to have an honest conversation with us about the future of what, through most of my life, was the biggest and most successful corporation in the world.

We need to look at the balance sheet -- not just for General Motors, but for society. We need to know how many people work there and how many people depend on GM pensions.

Then we need to calculate what the ripple effect of something happening to that safety net would be. Not how much that would cost in tears and anguish, but how much a collapse of GM would cost all units of government in dollars. That then needs to be weighed against the cost of keeping General Motors going in its present form.

Once we have those figures, or some approximation thereof, we may know better what to do. Right now, it is impossible for me to say what would carry the higher cost -- some form of bankruptcy, or expanded government loans, not only for GM and Chrysler but for their suppliers, and almost certainly, before long, for Ford too.

It may be true that nobody saw, or could have seen, the Wall Street crash coming. But while I am not an economist, I can tell you that everybody should have foreseen some version of what is happening now to the auto industry. For years, the major automakers have been sustaining multi-billion dollar losses.

Anyone who got past simple arithmetic had to know that if this trend continued, someday they would run out of cash. Today, more financial experts than ever are saying that some form of bankruptcy reorganization is inevitable for General Motors, and perhaps for the others as well. Indeed, it is hard for me to see any other way ahead.

However, if there is a silver lining to all this, it is clear that the present crisis is not a Detroit problem but, as economist Sean McAlinden put it, “a worldwide macroeconomic disaster”

Regardless of your politics, it is clear that the government’s top priority has to be to get credit flowing again. Otherwise, the eventual question is bound to be… buddy, can you spare a dime?

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Interview: Tracy Samilton - 2.27.09

Yesterday brought more bad news for General Motors. The company lost nearly $31 billion last year… almost 10 billion of which was in the last three months. Tracy Samilton has been covering the auto industry for Michigan Radio. Jack Lessenberry spoke with her about what’s next for the automaker.

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Essay: Hospitals in Crisis - 2.26.09

We have a health care system that for years has been held together by the equivalent of twine and paper clips, coupled with what used to be called “benign neglect.” That’s also known as the ability to overlook the millions without any health care coverage at all.

I personally have what we used to call Cadillac coverage through two different employers, but I know lots of people without any coverage, primarily my students. Now, as layoffs mount, there are a lot more of these. President Clinton was elected seventeen years ago on a platform of providing universal health coverage, and blew it.

I have been trying ever since to decide who I am angrier at: The health care lobby, which successfully managed to destroy any prospect of expanding coverage, or the Clintons’ ham-handed attempt to ram through a complex system nobody really understood.

When it was all over, I heard then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole say that if Clinton had tried merely to provide some form of coverage to the totally uninsured, it would have passed.

Now, the problem has gotten worse, and the cost to fix it will be much higher. I know upper-middle class people who have waited more than a day in suburban hospital emergency rooms.

When, three years ago, I stepped on a dog bone and broke two toes, I decided not to go to the emergency room because I didn’t have that kind of time. Instead, I went to a walk-in clinic because I could afford to pay to do so. That was a small sacrifice to make.

But we are facing a far more ominous problem.

Michigan has more than 140 hospitals, and they are now losing money on patient care, according to the Michigan Health and Hospital Association. Accordingly, a survey by Crain’s Detroit Business found, they are laying off workers, cutting services, and delaying projects.

The hospitals will tell you that none of this affects the quality of patient care, but common sense will tell you that of course it must.

We as a society face an eventual choice. The medical community could stop providing uncompensated care. We can let the homeless mother give birth by herself in the street, and let the uninsured gunshot victim bled to death. Or we can join the civilized world, and provide some form of universal health care to everybody. They do this in a far-off country called Canada. Back when the Clintons were trying to reform health care, I went up there and looked at their system.

We’ve been sold a lot of negative and false propaganda about it. Yes, there are inefficiencies – some of which could be fixed.

Yes, they do have to wait longer for some specialized treatment. But in the main, for primary care, the Canadian system works very well for most people most of the time. I happen to believe we could take that system and improve on it. Meanwhile, in this country we have more and more people who are being involuntarily switched to America’s no health care plan. Sooner or later, socialized medicine may not seem so bad.

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Interview: Matthew Davis - 2.26.09

Michigan hospitals are facing the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. The economic climate has lead many hospitals to slash their services and lay off workers. Dr. Matthew Davis is an associate professor of pediatrics, internal medicine, and public policy at the University of Michigan. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about the state of our health care system.

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Essay: Making a Difference? - 2.25.09

Here’s some encouraging news about our state’s largest city. The vast majority of Detroit voters made good, sensible choices for mayor yesterday. The four mainstream, experienced, moderate candidates got nearly 90 percent of the vote.

The one who symbolized the Kwame Kilpatrick regime, Sharon McPhail, got less than three percent of the vote.

Coleman Young, Jr., holder of the most famous name in Detroit political history, got barely four percent. That’s encouraging, because he is a young man in his twenties who dropped out of college and has no qualifications whatsoever to be mayor.

Detroit voters seem to have had their fill of silly and self-destructive behavior. In May, they will choose between these two men: Dave Bing, a former basketball star who established a very successful business in the city, and Ken Cockrel Jr., the former city council president, a man whose main negative feature is that some think his style is too deliberative and boring.

Both men care deeply about Detroit, and who are grownups, unlike the last mayor the city elected. There is some concern, however, that neither is an inspirational speaker or leader.

That may be something the winner can overcome. Incidentally, the voters will have six months to decide whether the winner May 5 is the man they want to entrust with a full four-year term.

That election comes in November, after yet another primary in September. My guess is that whoever wins in May will probably also win in November. And I think something else too.

Last fall, when President Obama was elected, a satirical newspaper had this headline: Black Man Gets Worst Job In World.

That might be even more apropos for the next Mayor of Detroit. Many of the city’s problems have less to do with race than geography. Detroit was a medium-sized city till the coming of the automobile. Then hundreds of thousands of people poured in.

Fortunes were made. But then those who made them left, for more spacious suburbs.

After a while, they took their businesses with them, or shipped them out of state. Unlike other cities like Los Angeles, Detroit was unable to annex surrounding territory.

The city, meanwhile, had developed a modern infrastructure of schools and services, and a fairly high tax base to maintain them. Eventually, people started to leave for the suburbs, for a variety of reasons. The more people left, the more those still there had to pay to keep their services up. This, in turn drove more away.

Today, times are difficult throughout Michigan. But they are especially so in Detroit. Paying the bills gets steadily harder.

What’s worse, a flawed city charter has meant a dysfunctional city council. The new mayor will have to cope with all this. What Detroit needs most, of course, is jobs and investment.

The way to accomplish that is a new city charter and, eventually, some form of metropolitan government. I don’t know whether either of these men can get us there. But I do know this: If one of them can, and does, the state ought to build a statue to him.

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Interview: Thomas Sugrue - 2.25.09

Detroit voters went to the polls yesterday for the first of four mayoral elections this year. Meanwhile, voters in Flint face special elections in May and August to replace their mayor who recently resigned. The outcome of these upcoming elections is not certain, but we do know that both cities face huge economic challenges. So, can a mayor really help change the future of a city? Historian Thomas Sugrue is a Michigan native and author of many books on our nation’s urban crisis. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Exoneration - 2.24.09

The early 1960s version of today’s TV’s reality shows were shows about doctors and lawyers. One of the best of these was The Defenders, which starred the brilliant E.G. Marshall.

I was a big fan of this show, which I watched when I was about ten years old. I remember little about it today, except that unlike Perry Mason, the defenders sometimes lost, which made it seem far more true to life. Nor do I remember any of the plots, with one exception. Some scumbag was clearly guilty of some horrible crime.

But because key evidence was lacking and the prosecutor couldn’t prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, the evildoer got off. Some young lawyer was incensed by the injustice of this.

E.G. Marshall calmly explained that this was why America was a great country. That it was far better to have a system with imperfect safeguards that allowed an occasional criminal to get off than to have one in which innocent men could be falsely convicted.

That made a powerful impression on me. The main thing it did was get my little boy’s head started on an eventual appreciation for our Constitution and the rule of law.

If there was a downside, it probably made me think we had a more perfect legal system than we in fact did. That‘s something I probably figured out when the civil rights movement burst onto the airwaves, and we learned that we hadn’t yet achieved Equal Justice Under Law. This is a lesson, clearly, that we have to keep learning.

Law professors Samuel Gross and Barbara O’Brien have done us a perhaps unwelcome favor with their study of false convictions in capital punishment cases. They found that since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s, at least one out of every 43 people sentenced to death was not guilty of the crime, usually murder.

Even one, frankly, would be too many. There are those who favor the death penalty because they think it is speedy justice.

Well, it is anything but. It takes years and years to execute anybody. Nor does it save the system money. A study a few years ago showed that it cost Florida more than three million dollars to execute someone, once the cost of all the appeals was figured in.

As ridiculously expensive as prison is, it would be far cheaper to keep someone locked up for life. Personally, I always have been against capital punishment for several reasons, none of them especially soft-hearted. First of all, sometimes we do make mistakes.

Second, there are a few warped individuals who are happy to commit suicide at the hands of the state, which is exactly what we allowed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to do.

Finally, for those who are guilty, it seems to be that being locked up in a concrete box forever is far more punishing than being put to sleep like Grandma’s ancient pussy cat. Until we can bring people back to life, perhaps we have no business taking it away.

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Interview: Samuel Gross - 2.24.09

There can be few worse miscarriages of justice than to execute a person for a murder they did not commit. Yet, it happens. Samuel Gross is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. He is the co-author of a new study that suggests that an alarming number of defendants sentenced to death were falsely convicted. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about his findings.

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Essay: O Canada - 2.23.09

One of my closest friends is a speech pathologist who treats adults with closed head injuries. Some of her patients appear utterly normal, until you realize they have no short-term memory.

“What time is it, Alice?” one woman used to ask.

“Three o’clock.” “Thanks,” she would say, and add, “What time is it?” I couldn’t help but think about this last week, when President Obama took his first trip to Ottawa, and the American press, once again, discovered Canada for the first time.

The standard of sophistication was, sadly, as high as usual. CNN is supposed to be our highest functioning news source. Kyra Phillips, an afternoon news anchor, pulled no punches. “We love those Canadians. They are good people,” she told the world.

However, fellow CNN anchor Frederika Whitfield was baffled by a bunch of guys in red coats and what looked like cowboy hats who showed up to welcome the President. “I guess they are some form of troops,” she said. Well, I don’t want to reveal any state secrets, Freddie, but the rest of the world refers to them as Mounties, as in Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

But this was positively enlightened compared to Fox where they constantly flashed the revelations that, “Canada is our largest trading partner,“ and “Canada is our largest supplier of oil.“

The best moment was when one of the innumerable young women anchors Fox employs attempted unsuccessfully to pronounce “charge d’ affaires.” Eventually, she explained that it was “French.“ Lord knows what will happen if Fox ever realizes there are boatloads of French speakers in Canada, especially in Quebec.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so cranky, but I am irritated by arrogant ignorance. Canada is, for us, the most important foreign country in the world. But since they don’t threaten to blow up our monuments, we dismiss them as a pleasant little people.

They are scarcely quaint. They are a vast multi-ethnic society long on mineral rights and raw materials and short on total population. Politically, they tend to be more liberal than we are, and Obamamania is, if anything, stronger in Canada than here.

However, they now have a conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, one of the few foreign leaders to be close to President Bush.

Now, there’s a new team. Apparently, most of what the President and the Prime Minister talked about were trade issues.

We don’t know if specifics came up, like the tangled mess over the rival structures to replace the Ambassador Bridge.

They didn’t seem to talk about the heightened security rules that have impeded travel and tourism. Nor did they solve Canada’s request to have U.S. environmental regulations waived for the oil sands in Canada’s western provinces.

None of these problems will be solved overnight. What they did do was start to build a relationship, which is essential.

There will be plenty of time to tackle these specific issues, and for CNN to discover once again, that yes, it snows in Ottawa in the winter, and people skate on the frozen Rideau Canal.

It’s an old French custom, don’t you know.

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Interview: Robert Noble - 2.23.09

President Obama’s trip to Canada last week was watched intently in our state. Michigan and Ontario are each other’s largest trading partners. And, Canada maintains a consulate in Detroit that is the size of some other country’s embassies. Consul General Robert Noble is Canada’s top diplomat in Detroit. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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