Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Safety Net - 2.19.09

Nearly forty years ago, a young guy named Ismael Ahmed, a thoroughly American, Brooklyn-born Muslim living in Dearborn, helped start something called ACCESS, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services.

The Arab-American community was starting to grow rapidly, thanks in part to immigrants from the war-torn Mideast. But there were few, if any, support systems available for them.

ACCESS became one of the most successful private welfare agencies in the country. It helped draw the community together, and in the process, helped create that community. It grew exponentially, to the point where, within a few years, it was also offering to help those in the area who were neither Muslim nor Arab.

Both the agency and Ahmed, who began running it full-time in 1983, were honored for their success by everyone from the United Way to President George H.W. Bush.

That background is hopefully going to prove of great help to Ahmed as he faces what is certain to be a difficult and bruising time running the Michigan Department of Human Services.

Michigan is likely to be facing a social crisis at least as grim as any since the 1930s, as more and more people lose their jobs without the prospects of new ones anytime soon. At the same time, the reality is that despite an increasing caseload, DHS is going to have less money. That’s because the state as a whole is going to have much less money. Most programs in Michigan are run out of the general fund budget, which has been around $9 billion dollars.

Next year, thanks to the economy, the state may come up more than $1.5 billion short. That means everybody is going to be hurting. ACCESS faced many problems, but its scope was limited to several thousand people. There are ten million people in Michigan, and more than two million of them are already in poverty or need some form of assistance.

DHS director Ahmed knows something about building public-private partnerships. Not only was he a master at doing that at ACCESS, he been exploring ways to do that with child welfare services since he first arrived in Lansing.

Now, it may be time to expand that expertise throughout the agency. Times haven’t been really good in Michigan for years, and the state has had a number of urgent and underfunded areas of need. The foster care system, for example. Growing poverty rates, especially among single parent families and other families with young children. The need for more trained social workers.

Even with the much stricter welfare standards adopted in the 1990s, the state has a growing caseload.

By the end of this year, it will be impossible to find a single agency in Michigan government which believes it has enough resources to completely do their job.

The Department of Human Services, however, serves a client base that has little or nothing to start with. Ahmed’s department provides what remains of the social safety net.

These days, more and more people are needing that net who never dreamed they would, never in a million years.

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Interview: Ishmael Ahmed - 2.19.09

Michigan’s unemployment rate is rising. And, as more people lose their jobs it often means more people turn to government for help. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is one agency that helps to create a social safety net. Ishmael Ahmed is the Director of HHS. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: The Bailout Tour - 2.18.09

Consider this: In the last seven weeks, the federal government has lent General Motors and Chrysler $17.4 billion dollars. They’ve run through all that, and are screaming for more.

They want another $14 billion right now.

They indicated that they’ll need more after that. General Motors thinks it will need a total of $30 billion. Chrysler – well, they’ve asked for $9 billion so far, but who knows how much they will need.

And don’t look now, but here comes Ford. They are merrily bleeding money with the rest of them.

Ford has now tapped its last available line of private credit, and are facing a big pension fund shortfall. The arithmetic strongly suggests Ford is likely to be in the bailout line before long as well.

Yet I am not sure if the American people have the stomach to subsidize the automakers much longer. If you lived in Colorado, would you want to cough up more billions to keep them afloat?

Meanwhile, none of these automakers is doing much of what they were created to do: Sell cars. Sales have been plummeting, thanks in large part to the credit crunch and the national recession. The Big Three sold about half as many cars last month as in January a year ago. Here’s what they plan if they get the new loan money.

General Motors intends to close five American plants, eliminate the jobs of another 47,000 workers worldwide, and dump Pontiac and Saturn. Chrysler just said they are going to ditch a few models, like the PT Cruiser and the Dodge Durango, and “trim production capacity.” I think that’s a polite way of saying they are also going to close more plants.

How either company gets from this point to profitability would seem to require a leap of faith. Maybe a pole vault of faith.

Still, the car companies claim that it would cost us, i.e., the government, more than $100 billion if both were to declare bankruptcy. Respected economists also say nearly two million jobs would be lost if Chrysler and GM went out of business. Add another million if Ford were to go belly up as well. That would be nationally devastating, at a time when the President is using everything except electric paddles to try to jump-start the economy.

Here is what I wanted to hear from GM and Chrysler yesterday.

I wanted them to make a powerful case that they had a plan to take both companies to a place where they would have a modern, flexible line of vehicles. I wanted them to discuss new ways of doing business that would make sense, and maybe even some daring thoughts of partnerships with government to build transit systems.

They automakers might also have done well to remind us that this nation needs a manufacturing sector, and there isn’t much of one left. Most of all, they need to more the conversation beyond gimmie, and they need a better answer for the question: Why should we help you? My political sense tells me they better do it, pretty soon.

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Interview: Sean McAlinden - 2.18.09

Chrysler and General Motors filed their recovery plans yesterday. The companies said they need another 19 billion dollars to survive. They also said that it would cost U-S taxpayers far more money than that if they declared bankruptcy. Sean McAlinden is Chief Economist at the Center for Automotive Research. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him about the state of the auto industry.

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Essay: Budget Blueprint - 2.17.09

I talked to Phil Power the other day about the governor’s budget. Phil, a former newspaper publisher, now runs a non-partisan, non-profit outfit he founded called the Center for Michigan.

He calls it a “think-and-do tank,” and says it is dedicated to getting the citizens of this state to come together around a common-sense agenda aimed at improving the quality of life in this state.

Not only for ourselves, but for our children and our children’s children, so that they won’t have to leave Michigan. He thinks there is something more important than figuring out how to cut spending.

More important, even, than balancing this difficult budget. And that is, figuring out what we want state government to do for us, and even more important than that, what we want this state to be.

For the last couple years, his shop has been attempting to get people in this state to think about their future by hosting a series of community conversations. Power called this the “Michigan’s Defining Moment” campaign. I attended a couple of these, and the earnestness and energy I saw was refreshing.

Eventually, with the help of moderators, consensus built around a common vision for Michigan’s future. “What they came up with was three pretty straightforward points,” Power said:

They wanted a state that had 1) a talented and globally competitive workforce, 2) a vibrant equality and a great quality of life, and 3) Effective, efficient and accountable government.

What’s especially good is that we already have all the tools in place to make those things happen. That is, if our elected leaders don’t manage to shoot us all in the foot.

Here’s what Power is suggesting now: The governor invite the legislature’s leaders to her office for a private discussion.

This would include the Speaker of the House and the Republican Minority Leader, and the Senate Majority and Minority leaders. They should talk about a shared vision for Michigan’s future.

My guess is that they ought to be able to sign on to something like the Michigan’s Defining Moment goals. But what the shared agenda is doesn’t matter as much as that there is one.

Once they do, they can make that the guidepost for trying to figure out where to cut and where to add, where to spend and where to save on the budget. That doesn’t mean they can’t argue over the ways and means of getting there.

But if we can all sign on to a shared vision, we may be able to avoid another train wreck. And we are running out of chances to embarrass ourselves. The Michigan-based auto industry appears to be dying. We have the nation’s highest unemployment rate, and it is still rising. If we are going to get out of this, we need to work together.

By the way, the idea of the legislative leaders meeting with the governor is neither new nor radical. Governor Bill Milliken used to do that every week, back in the 1970s.

It couldn’t hurt to give it another try.

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Interview: Rick Pluta - 2.17.09

Governor Granholm unveiled her budget for the next fiscal year last week… and it was full of large cuts to many state programs. But, since then the government has passed the economic stimulus package… which contains billions for the state. So, is Michigan’s budget looking a little better now that the state is set to receive federal funds? Rick Pluta is the state capitol bureau chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Digital Madness - 2.16.09

The sound and fury over the conversion from analog to digital broadcasting reminds me of something similar that happened in the history of radio. Notably, the rise of FM, or frequency modulation, which is how you hear everything broadcast on Michigan Radio

Early radio, in fact, was all AM radio, and the sound quality was considerably inferior to what you hear now. One day, an annoyed David Sarnoff, the head of NBC, told radio’s greatest inventor, “why don’t you come up with a little black box to get rid of the static?”

Some years later, the inventor, Edwin Howard Armstrong, told Sarnoff he had done it. Working long hours in a laboratory at the top of the Empire State Building, he had invented FM.

Everyone agreed the sound quality was far superior. Trouble was, none of the millions of radios then in existence could get FM. There weren’t any converter boxes, and apparently, nobody had any thought of making a radio that got both AM and FM signals.

Sarnoff thought FM wasn’t worth the trouble. Armstrong, who saw things in rigid black and white terms, thought everyone ought to dump AM and put in FM. That set off a battle so titanic that it inspired one of Ken Burns’ greatest documentaries, Empire of the Air.

Eventually, the corporation realized it was wrong, but Armstrong then refused to let NBC use his great invention. So they essentially stole it. Years of patent suits followed, and Armstrong, broken down by debt and stress, jumped off a building.

His widow took up his suits and eventually won every one of them, and became a very wealthy woman. Unfortunately, that didn’t do the inventor himself much good, beyond a nice tombstone.

Fortunately, nobody is being killed over digital TV. But there comes a point in everyone’s life when you have to wonder how much technology is too much. Our government says this switch was necessary for national security reasons, and of course I always believe them when they say that. Don’t you?

Washington will, however, make a tidy $20 billion or so auctioning off places on the new digital spectrum. Gee, that might be enough to keep the auto companies going for a month or two...

I suppose I’ll end up enjoying the new digital picture about as much as I enjoy most things. However, since the only things I ever watch are news and pre-recorded documentaries, my sensual pleasure may be a little less than that of some. However, I may be a little jaded because I first heard about the transition to digital from a TV executive who spoke to a class I was teaching, more than a decade ago. “You’ll be able to see the pimples on a major league pitcher’s nose when he throws the ball,” he proclaimed triumphantly. Funny, but that was a need I never knew I had.

Tonight, I think I’ll go home and clean my VCR.

As the Supreme Court once elegantly put it, there’s something to be said for adjusting to things with all deliberate speed.

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Interview: Karole White - 2.16.09

The nation’s TV networks and stations were originally supposed to switch to digital-only broadcasting on Tuesday. But with millions of households still without either newer TV or converter boxes, Congress pushed back the required date to June 12. However some broadcasters are making the switch this week anyway. Karole White is the longtime head of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with her.

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Essay: Budget Blues - 2.13.2009

I know it’s Friday the 13th, and that means talking about the state budget mess is not only depressing, but bad luck.

But what can you do? Anyway, welcome back to another episode of “Let’s burn the furniture and eat our seed corn to get ourselves through the long winter.” We’ve had quite a few of these long winters in a row, and there’s no more hidden salt pork in the smokehouse. The rainy day fund is as dry as the Sahara desert.

Well, maybe not quite. Help is on the way from the federal government, and that evidently how the Granholm Administration plans on balancing the books without destroying the state. By the way, I would like to compliment Bob Emerson, the budget director, and whoever worked on this proposal. They did a creative job with what they had to work with.

That doesn’t mean I agree with all their priorities. They don’t touch retiree benefits or boost hunting and fishing licenses, which they certainly should do. But all those folks vote.

Kids don’t vote, but cutting school aid funding and aid to higher education is a bad thing to do, especially after the governor asked the colleges to freeze tuition.

However, the governor is betting that federal stimulus money will be available for schools and colleges, and also help make up shortfalls in other areas.

Now, is that what the administration intended? That the federal government should borrow money so that the states could avoid addressing their long-term budget problems? Of course not. But President Obama must have known this would happen, all over the country.

If this reminds you of an old shell game, well ... some of us old baby boomers remember when the state started a lottery in the 1970s. They sold it to us as a way to fund education, and indeed, lottery receipts did go to the education fund. But they took the money they used to spend on education and did something else with it.

In any event, this budget is more or less balanced, as long as the state can siphon off half a billion in anticipated Medicaid funds. Actually, I don’t really think it is balanced at all. I think it is based on optimistic assumptions, and the deficit is apt to be even higher than they are predicting.

Nor do I think the Republicans will go along with even the timid revenue enhancements the governor wants. So they’ll be back at it, fighting and cutting again.

Frankly, there is a solution. What we need is a constitutional amendment establishing a graduated state income tax.

Now I know the usual bloggers will say this would be the final triumph of Marxism, and our economy would turn into Bulgaria’s.

That is nonsense. This country went through a boom in the early 1960s, when tax rates were vastly higher than now.

You get what you pay for. If we want prosperity, we need good schools, services and roads. Michigan needs to reinvent its economy.

And providing a good storefront window is the way to start.

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Interview: Bob Emerson - 2/13/2009

Governor Granholm’s fiscal year 2010 budget was presented to the state legislature yesterday… and, it was grim. The estimates show an almost one and a half billion dollar budget shortfall. Bob Emerson is the Governor’s Budget Director. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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