Those are statements to which probably everyone would agree.
Much as people on the Titanic would have agreed, on that long-ago April night, that their ship was in trouble. The question then is, once you know what’s wrong, what do you do about it?
The right answer, for those in charge of the Titanic, would have been A) see if you can save the ship, and B) meanwhile, figure out how to save as many as possible of the people on board.
The wrong answer would have been to worry about somebody stealing the spoons. In the case of the Titanic, conditions turned into a chaotic mess after the ocean liner hit the iceberg. In the end, more than two-thirds of the passengers died.
Michigan’s crisis is still ongoing, and is certain to affect more people. Ten million, rather than twenty-two hundred.
What should be clear to everyone is that our leaders owe it to us to do the best they can to get the state through the short term.
That includes both the state’s neediest citizens, as well as its greatest institutions. We especially have to make sure, like our good farmer ancestors, that we don’t eat up our seed corn. Meaning that we don’t destroy our young people’s chance for a future.
But what’s just as important is that our leaders develop a plan to address our long-term needs and problems.
What’s tragically clear is that they aren’t doing either. The ship’s going down, and they are rearranging the deck chairs.
Yesterday, for example, the House Appropriations Committee dithered over a proposal to fund school bus inspections by transferring money from the state police crime labs. The current budget actually eliminated all money for school bus inspections.
Not inspecting the buses sounds like an invitation to sue the state. But then a bunch of sheriffs complained about losing crime lab money, and the committee chair abruptly adjourned the hearing without explanation. When the going gets tough, run and hide.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm was at Michigan State, trying to get the students mad at the legislature for eliminating the Michigan Promise scholarship program. Earlier, she sent a letter to same effect to 348,000 high school and college students.
However, only a hundred or so showed up at her rally. The rest may have been smart enough to know the horse is out of the barn. The state senate is not going to take this up again this year.
If I had been one of those students, I would have asked the governor, “where were you when it mattered? Why weren’t you here before they passed the budget - which, by the way, you signed?“
Meanwhile, MSU President Lou Anna Simon actually did something. She announced the school will use federal stimulus money to restore some of what eight thousand MSU students would have gotten from the promise grant.
She added, however, that this was only a temporary, one-time solution. What should be clear is this: Michigan’s leaders need to forget about symbolism and slogans.
They need to come up with a long-term plan to fund our state’s essential needs in this time of economic change. The tragedy is that nobody in Lansing seems to be doing that.
And the last of the lifeboats are just about gone.
I appreciate the titles of your essays but this one depressed me terribly. It's apt, but...
Considering what our office holders have to do to maintain their highly-paid positions, we have no reason to expect them to do anything for us. Granholm should've had a high position in President Hilary Clinton's cabinet by now, eh? Bart Stupak's grandstanding position to punish women for his weird ideas on religion and health care are similarly horrid.
A pox on all their houses for looking out for their next career opportunity rather than looking out for the folks they are supposed to represent. Shame on them all.
Posted by: Any Salyer | November 20, 2009 at 10:50 PM