Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: End of the Beginning? - 4.16.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been taking stock of some recent good news for the state…

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When it comes to our long-term economic future, this has actually been the most promising week for Michigan in a long time. Two very good things happened. A major movie-making complex is going to be built in Allen Park, a downriver community south of Detroit. The film industry is, to my amazement, really taking off here.

This will help it grow even faster. In what may be an even bigger deal, four different companies announced plans to invest more than a billion and a half dollars in advanced battery manufacturing operations in Michigan. If all this actually happens -- and this is still something of a big if -- and if electric powered and hybrid cars are really going to be the vehicles of the immediate future …

This will be huge. What it would seem to indicate is that the next generation of a hopefully resurgent auto industry, or large parts of it, will be located in Michigan. If virtually all the batteries for the new cars are produced locally, it gives us a better shot at keeping assembly plants here, and maybe even attracting new ones.

Now, we must be careful not to get too far ahead of ourselves. We do need to look carefully at what was actually announced.

The best known of these companies is A123 Systems, a Massachusetts-based firm that has been chosen by Chrysler to make the batteries for the electric cars it plans to put on the road.

It plans to start operations in Livonia, and then, to quote Crain’s Detroit Business, “could expand to additional sites in Southeast Michigan, ultimately creating a total of more than 5,000 jobs.”

Initially, however, we are talking about 300 jobs. Now, that’s good news, but not economic reality-changing news. Two major questions remain to be answered.

First of all, we don’t really know if they can work all the bugs out of these batteries before the Chevy Volt and the new Chrysler electric vehicles are scheduled to roll off the line next year.

Engineers say that every so often, maybe in a few cases per million, lithium ion batteries can rupture, ignite, or explode when exposed to high temperatures. It wouldn’t take very many exploding batteries to completely doom these vehicles.

The experts seem confident they can work this out by the time the cars hit the market. We have to hope so - and hope that the new cars are exciting enough, high-performing enough, and priced low enough to appeal to vast numbers of customers.

The more they sell, the more batteries will be needed and, presumably, the more jobs will be created. Both these potential battery plants and the new, $146 million Unity Film studios owe their birth to the state’s skillful and intelligent granting of tax breaks.

Still, it will take time to see how successful these things are. When it comes to Michigan’s economic troubles, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, this isn’t the end. It isn’t even the beginning of the end. But maybe, just maybe, it could be the end of the beginning.

Essay: Taxing Concerns - 4.15.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry offers his thoughts on everyone's favorite subject: taxes...

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If you are sophisticated about matters of race and class, you know there are two types of people in this country. Those who did their taxes weeks ago, and those who are going to be rushing to the post office at a quarter to midnight tonight.

I did my taxes last month. That is, I paid someone to do them for me. Long ago, I figured out that procrastination was its own worst punishment, and the best thing is to do everything you absolutely have to do right away. That frees your time up to do something more pleasant and frees your mind of guilt.

Now I’ll tell you something even weirder about me. I like paying taxes. That’s right. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wish I had more of my own money to buy stuff with.

But I have no problem with paying taxes. Talking about money has replaced talking about sex as the new taboo, and I am about to break it. My wife and I paid somewhat more than $40,000 in federal income taxes last year, and I feel good about that.

This is a pretty wonderful country, and I like to contribute my bit to it. That doesn’t mean I approve of everything the government does. I think every cent spent on the Iraq war is wasted, and I wish the feds would spend it on rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure instead. But I don’t mind paying taxes, and regard those who whine about them as obnoxiously selfish.

The fact that we are so anti-tax stems in part from years of politicians unscrupulously telling us that taxation was theft.

We’ve been led to believe that we can have our highly expensive layer cake and get away with not paying for it, too.

My own views are classic conservative ones, taken from that paragon of Republican rectitude, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. “I like to pay taxes,“ he said. “They are the price we pay for civilized society.“ When the average person thinks of where their tax money goes, they think of bloated bureaucrats.

If you are on the right, you may think of your dollars going to undeserving welfare recipients. If you are on the left, you may think of money being used to torture people in secret CIA prisons.

In fact, the federal income tax is why we have an interstate highway system. Without taxes, we could drive on dirt roads and go to the bathroom in the back yard. As for education, mama could handle that while daddy fends off the vigilantes.

This year, to try and keep services up and ward off economic collapse, our government will spend more than a trillion dollars more than it collects. Much of the shortfall will be borrowed from places like Communist China. I think we should pay for more of it instead.

This is our country, and we’ve never thought much of freeloaders. On this tax day, it might make sense to realize that it is only right to pay to finance the lifestyle we have come to enjoy.

Essay: Public Service - 4.14.09

Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been keeping an eye on some elected officials’ ethical behavior...

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We have a hard time in journalism knowing what to do about those whose bad behavior give the entire profession a bad name, who make stories up or whose coverage is sleazy and embarrassing.

I think democracy has a similar problem with some of our elected representatives. Now, if congressmen or state legislators embezzle money or commit felonies, they sometimes do go to prison.

The problem is, what do we do about those who may not have broken any laws, but who behave in a way that destroys confidence in government? Take Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, who represents the eastern half of Detroit and some of its suburbs.

CCK, the mother of the recently disgraced mayor, has been in congress for a dozen years. She got there by knocking off an incumbent who may have been Washington’s most incompetent member of Congress. Kilpatrick is smarter than that, and her voting record, much of the time, is one I agree with. But her personal standard of behavior has been one that helps explain why people become cynical about their public officials. In fact, she has done much to foster the impression that her vote is essentially for sale.

That was brought home to voters last week, when it turned out that Kilpatrick had quietly tried to sneak a provision into the federal budget that would block all funding for, quote “continued planning, development, design or construction,” of a proposed publicly owned new international bridge over the Detroit River.

Currently a battle is going on between those supporting this bridge, known as the Detroit River International Crossing project, and businessman Matty Moroun, who owns the 80-year-old Ambassador Bridge, and who wants to build a new one next to it.

Everyone agrees a new bridge is needed. The government of Canada and most U.S. officials favor the proposed international bridge.

But the Ambassador Bridge owner wants to stop it. Now, You can make an argument that in these hard times, with public money in short supply, we should let private financing pay for a new bridge.

The congresswoman, however, hasn’t done that. What she has done is take $64,000 over the past decade in campaign contributions from Matty Moroun. The appearance of payback is pretty strong. As it was last winter, when she failed to support John Dingell’s unsuccessful attempt to keep his key committee chairmanship.

There was a clear appearance of tit for tat here. Last summer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a key Dingell foe, made a surprising trip to Michigan to campaign for Kilpatrick in a tough primary election. The congresswoman also has been charging the taxpayers for a expensive Cadillac to tool around her tiny district.

None of this is strictly illegal. But it doesn’t pass the smell test. We are living in a time when the leaders of Kilpatrick’s party have been calling on Americans for a spirit of shared sacrifice.

Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Whether the voters in some future election will care enough to do something about it remains to be seen.

Essay: Grim Reality - 4.13.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the future of the domestic auto industry.

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I am as happy as the next guy that the pirates were foiled and Captain Richard Phillips was rescued unhurt, and that the Tigers swept the weekend series against Texas. And yes, I like the first puppy too.

I would even if the Obamas hadn’t named him after Bo Schembechler. However, back to reality. Nobody can wallow in depressing news all the time. But ignoring approaching difficulty is about as smart as putting off a mammogram.

So let me be blunt. If we assume the best-case rational scenario about the future of the auto industry, the entire Midwest is going to be in for some severe and pretty rapid economic downsizing.

And we need to start thinking about how to cope with it. Here’s what‘s going to happen. By the end of this month, we will know whether Chrysler is able to pull off a merger with Fiat that the government has virtually ordered them to make happen.

If they do, Chrysler will continue to exist, for awhile. But some models and plants are certain to be phased out, if only gradually. Some say Fiat is mainly interested in the dealer network, and that over time, Chrysler, and Chrysler jobs, will mostly fade away. On the other hand, Fiat could give Chrysler a new lease on life. But if the deal falls apart, Chrysler will have to declare bankruptcy.

That will not be pretty. The company may be broken into chunks, some of which would cease to exist. And while somebody will keep making Jeeps, there is no guarantee they will make them in Toledo. But while Chrysler has a shot at avoiding bankruptcy, at least for now, the much larger General Motors has a much smaller chance.

On June 1st, or maybe a little before, odds are that GM will declare bankruptcy. The Treasury Department is telling them to get ready for what they call a fast, “surgical” bankruptcy.

That doesn't mean that General Motors will go out of business. It won‘t. I would bet there will be a GM twenty years from now. But it will be a much leaner, meaner and smaller GM.

As the Chicago Tribune noted Sunday, “even if both automakers survive, they will be smaller and pay lower wages and benefits. More communities will lose production and parts plants, and the states that have relied heavily on those manufacturing jobs, especially Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, will take a big hit.”

This will be a blow that will take years, or longer, to overcome. Millions of us are going to have less money.

We can wait for this to happen, or, as individuals, as communities and as a state, we can try to figure out what to do next, how to cushion the blow, and keep what auto jobs remain.

Then, we need to set about trying to attract the jobs of the future and preparing our kids to be ready to fill them. That may not be easy. But to my mind, it is a lot better than blaming someone else.

Or just running away.

Essay: Antisocial Networking - 4.10.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been spending time on Facebook and he's not so sure about how social social-networking is.

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I have a theory about all these social networking sites. They are the real al-Qaeda plot to destroy western civilization, a brilliant one. No more inefficient blowing up of single buildings.

They have found a way, through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn and god knows whatever else there is, to paralyze virtually everyone under the age of thirty. Within a few years, they'll just be able to waltz in and finish us off.

Even if they are not a plot, I suspect these things are going to do us in anyway. Without any doubt they are the biggest time-wasters in history. If you aren't of the Facebook generation, fear not.

Don't worry if you don't understand this stuff. I am not of that generation either, but have fearlessly taken a Facebook safari to explain it to you. Actually, I got into Facebook only because I wanted to read something, and the only way to do that was to sign up.

I put down my name and date of birth because I thought I had to. Within no time, I was deluged by notices that people wanted to be my Facebook friend. I ignored these, until someone's feelings were hurt. Okay. I pressed the button. I had my first Facebook friend. Then I got another. And another. I wrote a column about how silly this was, and got more. Finally I decided, okay. Since this doesn't mean anything to me, anybody who wants to can be my "friend."

So once a week, I would add on all these people. I did hear from two old enough to know better whom I had lost touch with and was happy to hear from. "Send me a e-mail," I told them. I don't want to "write on your wall." I did write on a wall once, telling a fellow middle-aged person that a close mutual friend was ill.

She thanked me, and told me, "Do you know everyone in the world can see what you write on someone's wall?" That was that.

Next, kids started complaining I didn't have any pictures of myself on Facebook. Darn right. I already knew that my best friend's daughter, who is unable to find the time to get it together for nursing school, had pasted 82 pictures of herself on Facebook.

I don't know how to put a picture of myself on Facebook and refuse to learn. So I called someone who did.

Thanks to her, the official World War II portrait of Joseph Stalin is on my Facebook page. A Presbyterian minister in California said that he liked the mustache, but thought I had gained weight.

However, all this went too far when boatloads of strangers wished me Happy Birthday. Big Brother Facebook had reminded them to do that. So I fixed my profile to conform more closely with Uncle Joe's. My birthday is now Dec. 21, 1879, thank you very much.

And to all my 428 Facebook friends who made this column possible, I'd just like to say this: Don't ever ask me to twitter. In my world, middle-aged men don't "tweet."

And that isn't about to change.

Essay: Irresponsible - 4.9.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the Detroit City Council.

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If you live in Grand Rapids or Holland, in Flushing or even some leafy southeastern suburb, you may feel that the antics of Detroit politicians have nothing to do with you.

Well, it would hard to be more wrong. Detroit is how the rest of America sees Michigan. Yes, folks elsewhere may know about other parts of the state. Detroit, however, is our window to the world and right now, it has big problems. All sorts of people are trying to fix the economy and the auto industry. The governor has appointed an emergency financial manager to fix the schools.

We won't know for awhile to what extent any of this will succeed. We have another huge problem though, which is doing the city's image irreparable harm. That is the increasingly erratic behavior of Detroit's city council president, Monica Conyers.

Nearly everybody has followed some of this, but if you haven't, it is off the charts for bizarre political behavior, and the system doesn't seem to have a way to deal with it.

Without dwelling on the details too much, she has sworn at her colleagues and called them insulting names, abused her power and indulged in clearly racist actions and behavior. Most recently, she intervened to get a city job for her brother, a convicted felon.

He lied on his resume, was fired for not showing up for work and then was arrested and convicted again of more felonies.

When this was uncovered, Conyers at first lied and said he wasn't her brother. You would think all this would earn her a fast ticket out of government, but believe it or not, the city doesn't have a clear way to deal with this.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's case was much simpler. Once it was revealed that he had engaged in conduct that was criminal in nature, you knew that while the wheels of justice might grind slowly, it would be just a matter of time. Once you had a conviction, he was gone.

Most elected bodies have a way of dealing those who are beyond redemption. A few years ago, when Macomb County State Senator David Jaye began exhibiting problems that included alcohol, pornography and guns, it was a fairly simple matter for his colleagues to expel him from office. But there is no easy way of getting rid of Monica Conyers, or of ensuring she won't be reelected.

And very few people know the reason why. No, it has nothing to do with race. The fault is in the city charter, adopted back when most of the city's voters were white. It doesn't provide any clear way for council to remove anybody. And the way Detroit's council is elected is just as bad. They are all elected at large.

That means the harried voters pick nine names they know out of a pool of hundreds. Conyers has a famous name, so they keep reelecting her. Hopefully, Detroiters will do better this year, and hopefully their new mayor, whomever he is, will push for charter reform.

We've got enough problems without the added burden of being the laughingstock of the world.

Essay: Overstimulated? - 4.8.09

Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the state's financial situation.

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No doubt about it, politicians are good at spending money, especially when it is money unexpectedly dropped in their laps. There is sort of a bizarre spectacle going on now in Lansing.

On one hand, these are the worst of times. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Money flowing in through tax collections has fallen alarmingly. The state government is now looking at a combined deficit over the next two years of at least $3 billion dollars, and counting.

Normally, that would be cause for despair, and for our politicians to start behaving like the proverbial rat colony when the food supply dries up. But at the same time, we've had something like $18 billion in federal stimulus money handed to us.

Well, about seven billion of that is in cash, the rest is tax credits. But all this means it's also Christmas in Lansing.

Last week, a new law authorized spending of stimulus money for road improvements. Two days ago, the governor signed a bill authorizing the spending of another $1.9 billion of it. Nearly half of that will go to education. The rest is being scattered around.

Almost a quarter of a billion dollars is going for job retraining programs, like No Worker Left Behind. Another quarter billion will go for sewer and drinking water improvements.

A similar sum will go to help create jobs and save energy, and the rest for community and food assistance and public safety.

There isn't too much controversy about most of this. Both parties agree government ought to fix the meteor craters and mine fields that pass for Michigan roads.

But the real stimulus battles lie ahead. Governor Jennifer Granholm and the legislature have an almost impossible task ahead: Plug the enormous and growing deficit gap without ruining Michigan's quality of life. State budgets, by law, have to be balanced.

The budget for the fiscal year ending September 30 now has a deficit approaching a billion dollars. The deficit next year is now estimated to be double that, and is expected to grow further still.

Last week, the state budget director said "some" of the federal stimulus money needs to be used to plug that budget hole.

Republicans, who control the state senate, would have reacted with outrage a few weeks ago. They have been insisting that the deficit needs to be solved with budget cuts, though they have been a bit hazy about what to cut.

Now, however, even the Republicans are tacitly admitting they'll need to spend at least some stimulus money to cover the deficits, but want to do the lion's share with deep budget cuts.

In the end, however, you can expect agreement to plug as much of the deficits as possible with stimulus funds. Most cuts will prove to be too hard, and the stimulus money is there.

Which may get us through the next couple years. But then, in the cold light of 2011, the cupboard will be bare, and we will be -- trust me on this -- facing yet another huge deficit.

And when that happens, we may no longer be able to put off till tomorrow what we should have done, long before yesterday.

Essay: Taking Responsibility - 4.7.09

It was learned in the last week that the Detroit Public Schools' deficit is $100 million larger than originally estimated. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about what's at the root of the problem.

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In the early years of our nation and our state, our politicians spent a lot of time debating actual political philosophy. Should we have a strong central government, or a weak one? Should we tax goods from foreign countries extra, and if not, why not?

Now these guys -- and back then, they were mostly all guys -- were still politicians. In the middle of debating whose philosophy was best suited to creating the best possible democracy in America, they were apt to fire personal insults.

Alexander Hamilton was charged with stealing money from the treasury (he wasn't) and of having an affair with a would-be embezzler's pretty young wife (which he was). Thomas Jefferson was charged with selling out to France (false) and of fathering children with a slave girl (true). Still, there was a lot of high-minded stuff, and actual debate, at the bottom of which lay two core ideas:

First, the goal was to create a government that did the best job possible of preserving freedom and servicing the citizens.

Second, whatever we stood for, we all ought to be personally and professionally responsible for our actions.

Those two ideas are critically important, and, I think, a large part of the reason we've gotten so far off track in this country, and maybe especially so in Michigan, and in some of our larger cities.

Which brings me to the unbelievable mess politicians have made of the Detroit Public Schools. They've undoubtedly behaved badly elsewhere, but Detroit is the biggest and worst example.

For years, top administrators and the members of the elected school board failed to exercise any financial discipline or oversight whatsoever Four months ago, the state superintendent of schools warned that a state of financial emergency existed. The schools had a large and improper deficit, and like General Motors today, had failed to file an adequate plan for dealing with it.

So the state took control, and appointed Robert Bobb, a very distinguished public servant, to clean up the mess. He's been on the job just a few weeks, and has already discovered that the deficit was three times as large as first feared.

With students fleeing by the tens of thousands and revenues dropping, school administrators padded the payroll, threw parties, and traveled at the expense of poor taxpayers. When they learned how bad things were, board members still elected to fly to California to attend a conference. I'm against capital punishment, but feel like somebody needs to be shot. What are these people thinking?

I got a clue from a posting on our website the other day. A man said, "I draw the line at (paying to educate) everyone else's children. I got enough to think about with my own daughter."

That's not a conservative attitude. That's an attitude of selfishness that has created the mess we're in, and which threatens the survival of our state and way of life. We all hang together or we all hang separately, they used to say during the American Revolution.

We need to see that this is even more true now.

Essay: The Great Game - 4.6.09

And the MSU Spartans play North Carolina tonight in Detroit for the NCAA title. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has the game on his mind.

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I may have a political opinion or two, but I am decidedly balanced when it comes to Michigan universities. I went to Michigan State as an undergrad. As a graduate student, I went to the U of M, and these days, I teach at Wayne State University.

I also am fairly neutral when it comes to sports. As in, all sports bore me to tears, with one exception. I was a major league baseball fan before greed and the end of any loyalty or team continuity ruined it for me. I also once liked hockey, and might become a fan again if the Red Wings move back to Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

But I am very fond of Michigan, and am very happy that not only is the world series of college basketball being played in Detroit, but that MSU is one of the two teams in the NCAA final game, which will be played in Ford Field in downtown Detroit tonight.

Incidentally, you might be wondering why a basketball championship game is being played in a football stadium.

That's a good question, and I'll tell you if I ever figure it out. What is even more baffling, however, is the idea that this event can somehow lift us out of our economic morass.

Bloomberg News did a story on this in which I was quoted as saying something anti-social like "it would be better if somebody opened a factory that employed a thousand people."

Joe Koenig, a Spartan alum, was one of a number of people who wasn't having any of my sensible blather. "I think it's going to shine an extremely positive light on Detroit," he said. You won't find him tailgating in the snow tonight, however.

Joe was laid off from his job at Ford. Not Ford Field, but the auto company, and has gone off to Chicago. Someone who had more reason to be optimistic was a spokesman for the official bar for State fans. "It's like a tidal wave in the desert," she said.

Another bar manager added, "it's going to make people forget what's going on for about three days," meaning the economy.

Now, don't get be wrong. I am very happy the final four were held in Detroit, and though I am also a Wolverine and a Warrior, I want Michigan State to win an upset victory.

Thanks to this event and the fact that MSU hung in there to the end, a few bucks are flowing in that otherwise wouldn't have, and that's great. Yet we can't expect any sports event to turn us around. The World Series didn't do it. The All-Star game and the Superbowl didn't do it, though all those things made us feel good.

But there is always the chance that if we strut our stuff responsibly before a national audience tonight, somebody watching will think this isn't such a bad place to do business, and come here.

And if that happens, there is a basketball term for what that would mean to Michigan. It would be a real home run.

Essay: Stories to Tell - 4.3.09

A new study from Michigan State University says the film industry grew in the state last year, and added 65 million dollars to our economy. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has some stories that would make great blockbusters.

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I often criticize our lawmakers in Lansing, but they did one thing very right last year. They passed a package of tax incentives aimed at luring Hollywood to Michigan.

And guess what: it worked. Michigan's film industry grew exponentially. According to an economic study at Michigan State, this added $65 million to our economy last year.

This year, despite the recession, the net positive impact is expected to double again, and keep growing after that.

I have seen at least one of these films: Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood, a good movie set largely in Highland Park and Detroit.

But it got me thinking that Hollywood is missing out on the real opportunity. Not only has Michigan become a good place to make movies, we have a whole set of amazing true stories that have never been told in film, and which could be real blockbusters.

Let me suggest just three of them.

The first would be the story of a kid named Billy Durant. He was a shiftless high school dropout from Boston who drifted to Flint, where he shaped up and became a successful manufacturer of horse-drawn buggies. Then, one day, he is approached to run a new company that is making a newfangled invention, horseless carriages.

The company is called Buick. He rises to the top, and cobbles together a new company he calls...General Motors.

A few years later, he is ousted from power. He picks himself up and starts a new company called? Chevrolet. He rises to the top, wins back control of GM, and merges Chevy with it.

Four years later, he is ousted from power again. He returns to Flint, where the man who created General Motors spent the last quarter century of his life running...a bowling alley.

My second movie is about an eccentric inventor who rose to become the richest and most famous man in the world, whose apple of his eye was his only son, a brilliant and artistic lad.

Yet when the boy grew older and formed his own ideas and identity, dad turned against him, hounding him to his eventual death at age 49. Before his son died, the old man made it clear to him that he preferred the company of a brawling, coarse security guard.

In the end, his widow and his grandson face him and the goon down and take back control of the firm. The title of this movie? Henry and Edsel Ford.

Finally, the story of our first terrorist suicide bomber. He was a farmer who for still unknown reasons spent months packing dynamite into the local elementary school in Bath, Michigan. On May 18, 1927, he blew it up, killing dozens of children and teachers.

Then he drove up to the school, called the superintendent over, and blew his car and everyone around sky-high. He left behind a mysterious sign saying "criminals are made, not born."

Now how could anyone fail to make gripping movies out of stories like those? Okay Hollywood, I gave you the stories. Now roll 'em.